Listen to your book read aloud

This page is about Listen, which reads your book aloud a sentence at a time while you follow along. Hearing your words is one of the best ways to catch a clunky rhythm, a repeated word or a missing one—and as you listen, you can mark each spot that needs work without stopping.

Start listening

Put your cursor where you'd like to begin, then click Listen in the toolbar. A small bar appears at the top of the page and the reading starts from the cursor. The sentence being read is highlighted, so you can follow along.

It carries on from scene to scene to the end of the book, so you can sit back and listen to a whole chapter.

Screenshot: the listen bar at the top of a scene, with a sentence highlighted on the page and a note typed in the mark box.

The controls

• Play and Pause—or press Space.
• Back a sentence and Forward a sentence—or the ← and → keys.
• Back a paragraph—or the ↑ key, to hear a passage again.
• Speed—from 0.8× to 2×.
• Voice—any of the voices your computer or browser offers.
• Stop and close—or press Esc.

The keys work while the listen bar is the thing you last clicked.

Mark a spot

When you hear something that needs another look, click Mark (or press M). Write leaves a comment on the sentence being read, and the reading carries on. If you'd like to say what bothered you, type a few words in the box beside Mark first; or just mark it and keep going.

Your marks collect in the review rail on the right, alongside any other comments, so when you're done listening you have a list of every place your ear caught. See Review suggestions and comments.

What it reads

Listen reads your scene as it would print with every suggestion accepted: suggested new words are read, and words a suggestion is striking out are skipped.

About the voices

The voices come from your own browser and computer, so nothing you've written is sent anywhere to be read, and it costs nothing. It does mean the voices vary from one device to another—Edge, Chrome and Safari all have good ones. If your browser has no voices at all, the listen bar will say so.