As a writer, and as a person, I tend to rush. I don’t know how many bruises I’ve gotten on the sides of my legs for thinking I was too busy to walk around the corner of a desk, but it’s been a lot. This rush happens in writing, too. I can’t type as fast as I can think, and I end up losing a lot of small words to bad copyediting. My more patient writing friends have advised that I read everything back aloud, but I rush when I read too, and tend to put the small words back in myself.
One solution is TextEdit Speech. Obviously, we have the technology to have a machine read something aloud, but I didn’t know where this technology was until last year, and I didn’t start using it all the time until recently. While TextEdit Speech won’t catch their/there/they’re mistakes, it will let you know, in its awkward, passive aggressive way, that the article you thought you had included is missing. It’s also nice to hear your words in someone else’s voice. Even if it’s a voice from the future getting ready to destroy you.