Chapter 16. Proofread Your Final Manuscript

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This page contains the following subjects:

Effective Onscreen Editing
Learning to proofread PDF files
Proofreading fonts
Side-by-side windows
Text-to-speech capability
Word’s "Compare Documents" feature

Effective Onscreen Editing

If you really do a lot of editing, its worthwhile getting a copy of Effective Onscreen Editing.

Learning to proofread PDF files

If you need to learn to proofread using PDF files, check out Adrienne Montgomerie’s course.

Proofreading fonts

Some fonts have been designed to exaggerate the differences between easily-confused characters, thereby making it easier to spot problems during proofreading. Try the following free fonts:

Side-by-side windows

To automatically display two documents side by side, select the Ribbon's View tab, then click the "View side by side" icon:

If you want the second document to scroll simultaneously as you move through the first document, click the "Synchronous scrolling" icon:

Text-to-speech capability

Adobe Reader offers a Read Out Loud feature (under the View menu).
JAWS screen-reader software (Windows only).

The built-in Windows text-to-speech utility is called “Narrator" (details available from Microsoft). To start this software, open the Start menu, select Search, and type "Narrator". Windows will automatically present a series of search results. Choose "Turn Narrator on or off", then clikc "Open" to display the control panel:

In the Narrator control panel, you can turn the feature on or off, or choose the settings. For more details, see Microsoft's article “Hear text read aloud with Narrator”.

Word’s "Compare Documents" feature

This is documented in the online information for Chapter 15, so I won't repeat that information here.