[2022-12-23] Reading out loud
This morning, a friend who knows my love of writing sent me a link to a recent New York Times article about a practice three of its reporters use to sharpen their writing: they read their drafts out loud as a last check before submitting them for publishing.
In How the Spoken Word Shapes the Written Word, Times' Senior Staff Editor Sarah Bahr explains why the three reporters have made reading their content out loud an essential part of their writing process.
Julia Jacobs finds that reading her drafts out loud forces her to slow down and focus on her writing instead of the many pings, calls and emails coming at her. It also helps her untangle sentences: if she runs out of breath while reading a sentence, she knows it's too long.
Dan Barry has, for many years, read his draft articles to his wife.
"When you’re reading aloud to someone else and know the material, you will hear falseness," Mr. Barry said, "where you failed to properly reflect another side of the issue or described someone in a manner that might be perceived as demeaning or unkind that wasn’t your intention when writing."
In addition to helping him nail the rhythm of an article, reading out loud enables Barry to more readily discover overworked alliteration, missing articles, and gaps in logic.
Alissa J. Rubin reads her stories out loud to identify unnecessary adverbs, such as very and really, to break up long paragraphs or eliminate them altogether, and to rewrite content that's confusing. She used the practice in her previous role as a fiction writer to ensure that the dialogue of her characters was realistic.
The three reporters agree that "Hearing their words makes their writing stronger." Jacobs offers this practical tip: Do not mumble, slur or race through an article when reading the penultimate version out loud.
"Use your whole voice, at a normal pace," she said. "You will cringe. And then you will fix what made you cringe."
In sharing the Times article with me, my friend said: "I know you are a big promoter of writers reading their copy aloud." Indeed, in Editing your work, I shared this tip:
Read your work out loud. Reading text out loud allows you to hear errors that you might not otherwise see. It also slows down your review so you're more likely to find mistakes, awkward language and repeated words.
And in Make your CV scannable and other tips, I recommended:
Double check your CV before sending it out. Read it out loud, which helps you slow down and discover typos and missing words. Have a competent person (ideally someone who writes well and knows grammar rules) proofread your CV too. They will likely see things you won't.
In addition to reading my draft posts out loud, I like to review them in a different format for my final read through. For instance, I write my blog posts in Evernote but paste the content into Gmail for a final edit before publishing the article; Gmail has a better editor and spellchecker than Evernote, and its default shortened line length makes it easier to spot errors. When I worked in an office, I would print important documents to proofread in print rather than relying exclusively on my eyes to pick up mistakes on my computer screen.
If you want to improve your writing, read your text out loud. You will almost always find something that can be improved.
