Have you ever wondered how you can easily edit, proofread and improve your emails, articles and other forms of writing?

It is said that the hand of a writer is blind. You can read and reread your text and a million times, yet some pesky typos will still escape you.

What to do?

The best way is to give it to another person, a fresh pair of eyes that will catch those problems. The problem with this approach is that many people who offer to edit your piece may “correct” the right thing and leave the wrong thing intact.

The next best thing would have been to have a detached version of yourself. But you can not clone yourself.

What to do?

Get your phone to read your article to you. This serves as another person reading the article. You can spot the omissions, the complex sentences and the cadence of the text. If you want, you can just listen without looking at the text. When something sounds off, immediately fix it.

It is said that the minimum number of times to edit a text is three times. Accordingly, I ask my phone to read the text to me at least twice. First, before editing and after editing.

How do you do that?

I write my articles using Notes that is native to iPhone. The first step is to highlight the paragraph you want to listen to. You will automatically see a pop-up menu. Step two, choose “Speak” and you will hear a robotic voice reading the text to you.

You may do this paragraph by paragraph or you can “Select All” to read the entire article.

I don’t know if Android phones have that functionality. But try it and see.

This nifty function will potentially save you from many embarrassments.

Series count: 54/100

• Ibraheem Dooba, PhD