Writing for Dyslexics...
I just ran across a service that might be very useful: Google Voice
It’s free to sign up, but some of the services do cost, so read the user information carefully.
The most important feature, from an author's point of view, is that you can leave a voicemail message for yourself and Google will transcribe it and send it to you as an email. It’s kind of cool. What this means is that you’ll be writing like Raymond Chandler, and many other very good writers, who dictated their work. This has the great advantage of using your actual voice, hopefully sounding just the way you (and your imaginary characters) speak, as opposed to write.
Comments
Like Raymond Chandler?
...thnak yuo!
Love, Andrea Lena
I think it also helps
... if the author knows his or her story forwards and backwards. ^_^
I'm a BIG Google Voice fan.. however...
Not in a way Google intended or would likely approve. ;-)
I don't know if it's my friends (and my) diction, but the Google Voice transcripts are often ....dada-esque... and far more interesting/amusing than the original audio.
It's kind of a "damn you autocorrect"-type phenomenon.
It amuses me endlessly.
Still, I would be loath to count on it to file a deposition or anything where accuracy cunts.
Granted, it has a few flaws...
...but they're trying to improve it, and I’d hesitate to bet against Google on anything they set their many minds to do.
Siri has the same problem, and for that matter so do professional transcribers. Here's one:
They include a handy estimation tool, so you can easily compare costs.
They actually charge extra for ‘verbatim’ transcription, since it takes a bit more care and backtracking than ‘guesstimates.’
The point is, though, that for many people telling a story is lots easier than typing it.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
I was doing the opposite and
I was doing the opposite and using a "Text to Speech" program and ran into something I found odd. Every time an ellipsis showed up, the program would go "dot dot dot." Unfortunately the author was using it often and it was driving me nuttier. Now I am trying to find out exactly what should be said if you are reading aloud and one shows up.
You talk
'in italics'.
Angharad
Ellipses... Ellipsises?
I use ellipses in SEE, and I use them generally to indicate a pause of some kind, like when the speaker suddenly has a wayward thought or a different understanding of what the other person said.
I can't think of another simple way to indicate that kind of speech-pause. Okay, I could rewrite the entire conversation with descriptive phrases but there's only so many hours in the day, y'know?
Penny
Ellipsis - plural ellipses
The reason why you get "dot dot dot" read back to you is because three individual dots have been used, rather than the actual ellipsis character. Any typeface worth its salt will have an actual character in the form of three small dots, each dot being about half to two-thirds the diameter of a fullstop (period, 'dot') and the whole having about the width of an em-dash, like this …
On a Windows(R) keyboard you can 'call' this chacter using ALT+0133 (hold down the ALT hey and type the digits).
It is to the credit of your text-to-speech program that it does recognise that these three dots are not three fullstops. Logically that would imply two empty sentences and might thus be voiced simply as a (single) 'sentence ending', the two empty sentences not being voiced at all. Also, without some intonation (missing in many text-to-speech programs) I cannot see how the program can convey that sense of 'tailing off', of something implied but not said, that the ellipsis imports. And actually voicing it as "ellipsis" (trivially possible to recognise and code) would IMHO be a worse dissonance than "dot dot dot".
Many people (myself included) seem to use the 'three-dot' alternative when writing for the screen, presumably because that is easier to read at small screen sizes. In Courier, and in the display typeface font used here, the readability of the ellipsis character is not too bad; but in some serif typefaces the individual dots are tiny on the screen. To me, the 'three-dot' alternative, as the 'lowest common denominator' is better for anything written for the screen. A true ellipsis usually works well in print, and I do use the ellipsis character, rather than 'three-dot', if what I am writing is to be printed, for example a business letter.
Being somewhat OCD about grammar and typography, what I really, really, dislike is the 'middle way' that I have seen some use. That is an ellipsis (the character) followed by a fullstop.
Like this: ….
Horrid!
Xi
Style Guide
There seems to be some disagreement here. The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed, section 13.48 Ellipsis defined)) says at the end:
"If they prefer, authors may prepare their manuscripts using the single-glyph three-dot ellipsis character on their word processors (Unicode 2026), usually with a space on either side; editors following Chicago style will replace these with spaced periods."
What they mean by "spaced" here is a non-breaking space so all three periods are forced to be on the same line.
I hardly think they're alone in this. My suspicion is that they do it this way to let the publisher's typesetter (or typesetting program) decide whether to use the ellipsis character in the selected font or do something else; as you point out, the ellipsis character in some fonts is ugly, unreadable or both.
Four dot ellipsis
Speaking as a former printer and typesetter, the four dot ellipsis is used when the three dot one occurs at the end of a sentence. And ellipses do NOT have spaces before them, no more than commas or parentheses do, goofy stylebooks not withstanding. Exceptions exist but they are exceptions, usually for the sake of readability which is ruling monarch for any conscientious typesetter.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
But... this is Google
so how long before you start getting AD's presented to you or even worse, targetted AD's appearing in your text.
For example, you dictate something like this:-
"Sandra climbed into his customised F-150 unsure about his intentions"
Then a huge popup covers the screen with
"Great deals on Dodge trucks at Bart Simpson Motors, only a 5 minute drive from your location."
then followed by
"To remove Adverts from this service please sign up with your Credit Card. Only $50 per month."
Yeah, I'm being cynical but IMHO Google only provided services if they can either make money from it by charging you OR by selling your details to Advertisers.
If it wasn't Google then I might be tempted to give it a try.
Samantha
I type Dyslexic.
I am not Dyslexic but my typing often comes out looking the way Dyslexics see things, that is until I back up and carefully edit it. I wonder if there is a name for that, and if others do it too, or if I am just "unique".
>i< ..:::
OFF home
I rarely look at keyboard except for things like *, #, or ~. However once in a while I start typing before I find the two little bumps and when I look at screen to edit, OMG, what is that?
The only thing that is worse,
The only thing that is worse, is starting typing in wrong keyboard layout (two languages with different alphabets on one keyboard and so on).
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