If you are a writer, you may find that over time you will put a lot of writing tools in your tool belt that help improve your process.
You may have already been using the two that I’m going to share today, but just in case, like me, you don’t know about these— I’m going to share.
The first one was recommended by a friend for editing. (Thanks, Joni!)
It is the read aloud icon (second icon from the left just above your document) in the toolbar of WORD under “review”. Clicking on this icon produces a function that reads your document out loud in a very monotone voice but at a steady pace. As you listen and follow along, you can stop it and make corrections.
To restart, just click in your document on the sentence you want it to continue on. Then click the start button as seen in the picture below.
For some reason, it was so much easier for me to find mistakes this way. You can start and stop as much as you need too.
The second tool is the editing icon with the image of a pen, just to the left of the read aloud function. It is the first icon just above your document in the tool bar. Finding this resource was beyond amazing to me. If you click on the pen icon, then click somewhere in your document, a sidebar comes up that will tell you, based on AI, what percentage of your document is correct, and what corrections may still be needed. If it is 97% or above, you are doing very well, but when I checked online, it said you still need to work to get it as perfect as possible. Anything below 97% definitely needs work.
I played around with it and tested it out on some of my recent writing in the form of a book, short story, children’s story, and a flash fiction. The results were:
- Book – 97%
- Short Story – 97%
- Children’s Story – 94% (Needs work)
- Flash Fiction – 100% (This was jaw dropping for me.)
This is the results I had from the book I’m working on. You can see it still needs some work.
Now I don’t know if scoring high would make your writing more appealing or worthy of publishing, but it was helpful to me to see where I might need more work. I also agreed with the assessment. The children’s story definitely needs more work, even in my assessment.
I hope these tips are helpful to you. If you have more tips to share with the writing community, please don’t hesitate to comment below. We all need as much God-given help as we can get.
“Then the LORD said to me, ‘Write my answer plainly on tablets, so that a runner can carry the correct message to others.” Habakkuk 2:2 (NLT)