[stylist] JAWS and Our Craft

Fri Mar 14 19:15:30 UTC 2014

Yes, thanks for this as well!
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ann Bliss" <annbliss1 at gmail.com>
To: "Writer's Division Mailing List" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2014 12:20 PM
Subject: Re: [stylist] JAWS and Our Craft


>    Thanks so much for this!  I am not a JAWS user, but have the demo.  I 
> was able to find where I had left bold on too long.  Now, I need to 
> located unmatching fonts. Excellent!
> Ann
>
>
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Homme, James
> Sent: Friday, March 14, 2014 7:56 AM
> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [stylist] JAWS and Our Craft
>
> Hi Bill,
> I've never used anything but a screen reader, but I benefit from listening 
> to what I write. I've read that writers should read their stuff aloud to 
> catch mistakes. Screen readers miss things like to, 2, and too, though. I 
> used to get caught on that by my manager. Now, I think, if you run grammar 
> check with spell check, Word tries to catch some of those issues.
>
> Lately, two settings have helped me in the JAWS world. Right now, I am 
> forgetting where this is in older versions of JAWS. I would press INSERT+V 
> and look for capitalization, and look for something that says "Caps 
> indicate on." One of the choices has to do with line. I would set it to 
> that choice. This helps me catch capitalization errors as I read with 
> DownArrow, line by line. The second setting is to pick a different sound 
> scheme. You can temporarily do that with ALT+INSERT+S. According to my 
> memory, the one I pick is Classic Attributes. That tells me just the font 
> characteristics, such as bold, italic, and strike through. When I set 
> that, JAWS tells me if I make a mistake, such as leaving bold on too long 
> and unintentionally making something italic that I meant to make normal. 
> Then I set it back the way it was after I'm done editing, because in Word, 
> JAWS keeps the scheme the same when you close and open Word.
>
> Oh my goodness. The date is 3.14, and someone brought in pie. I just 
> totally lost what I was going to say next.
>
> Oh, OK. Here it is. If you follow the directions in the document I sent 
> about using styles, I would separately use INSERT+V to turn style names on 
> as you review for formatting. I like to do that separately, because if you 
> have style names and attributes on together, JAWS reads the attributes 
> that the styles create. For example, the Heading 1 style is bold. I don't 
> care if it is bold or whatever, so I would rather concentrate on the body 
> of the text when I turn attributes on, and on section titles and so on 
> when I look for formatting errors.
>
> In Word, one of the styles is named "Bold," and another is named "Italic," 
> so that might be confusing. You would just have to check your settings.
>
> I can see that I need to organize these thoughts better. Sorry for 
> rambling so much.
>
> Jim
> This next thing might sound a little prejudice. Programmers suck at 
> writing. I'm proud that I have gone from hardly being able to string 
> sentences together to hopefully being somewhat clear. I hang around this 
> group, hoping that some of the good writing stuff rubs off. I'll never 
> write novels, and maybe I'll play with poetry a little, or get the courage 
> to make a short story, but I think I can write directions OK.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of William L 
> Houts
> Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2014 9:17 PM
> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
> Subject: [stylist] JAWS and Our Craft
>
>
> Glancing over some recent messages concerning screen readers and
> writing, I thought I'd pony up some experience of my own.  In general,
> my experience with Jaws as I carry on with my second novel has been
> spectacular, especially when considering that blindness itself is, to
> put it mildly, somewhat sub-optimal.  I wrote my first novel using JAWS
> with the Eloquence synthesizer  (I'm one of that screen reader's older
> customers --my serial number is only five figures long).  And as I
> prepare to plunge into the last third of my current book, I'm seeing
> that my writing has actually improved.  And I think that might be
> because writing with a screen reader forces the writer to pay attention
> to each and every word in a sentence, and make editorial decisions based
> on rock solid standards about things like run-on sentences and the use
> of ten dollar words where two dollars would serve the purpose just as
> admirably.  Also, nowadays I have no patience for adverbs which clutter
> up my prose line.  Noun, verb phrase period, that's the way many of my
> sentences go.  Well, no, actually that's a bit of a lie.  I write a
> comparatively poetic prose line, but it's rooted, I think, in elementary
> grammar, the exception being when I think a semicolon and dependent
> clause might be called for.
>
> Anyway, I'd like to  know how other folks look at their writing from a
> technical perspective, and whether they feel that writing with a screen
> reader has helped or harmed their craft.  Any takers?
>
>
> --Bill
>
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> --
> "Let's drink a toast now to who we really are."
>
>           --Jane Siberry
>
>
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> Ann Bliss
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