Have you ever wondered why an editor, QA or PM ask you to read your work aloud? Read on to find out why.
Your brain likes to be helpful and fill in information when it can. Most of the time, that’s super helpful. But, in some cases, it’s not.
Have you ever read your own work and still missed an obvious grammar mistake or typo? That’s because your brain guesses what should be there and corrects it in your head.
You see things like this all the time on the internet:
| I cdn’uolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg: the phaonmneel pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rseearch taem at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Scuh a cdonition is arpppoiatrely cllaed typoglycemia. |
If you read through it you’ll be amazed at how much you can understand. That’s because your brain is attempting to correct everything for you. And that’s great – unless you are reading your own work. When you’re editing your work before you submit, your brain sees what it thinks you meant rather than what you actually wrote.
However, when you read aloud it’s a lot harder to miss spelling and grammar mistakes. You are more likely to see, and hear what’s actually on the page rather than what your brain thnks you mean to write.
This will help greatly to increase your scores and reduce your returns.
A couple of tips:
- Before you read anything aloud, change the font to something you aren’t familiar with. This will force your brain to work a bit harder so you will be more likely to catch any mistakes. Just remember to change it back when you are done.
- Use text to speech software to listen to your copy. Hearing your voice, even if it’s being read by computer software will also help you catch errors.