Project Gutenberg is an effort to encourage the creation and distribution of books in the public domain. It is a fantastic resource for users of screen readers as most books in the public domain can be found there in plain text formats. Gutenberg's text files do have some problems with screen readers though. The text is wrapped at 65-70 characters and paragraphs are separated by a double-line break which causes a synthetic voice to ad pauses at the wrong moments. We can fix these issues by using some handy steps found at lifehacker. Perform the following actions in a program like word or openoffice.org.
Paragraph Marks
1. Ctrl+H opens the search and replace dialog box
2. Tab to where it says 'Find what:' and type in ^p^p. The symbol ^ is pronounced by JAWS as caret and can be inserted by pressing shift + 6 on a US international keyboard)
3. Tab to where it says 'Replace with:' and type in "((New Paragraph))"
4. Tab and OK on 'Replace All'. Paragraphs are now marked
Line Breaks
5. Press Ctrl+H if the find dialogue has closed. At 'Find what:' type in ^p
6. At 'Replace with:' type in a single space
7. Tab and OK on 'Replace All'. The text is now one big solid block, intersperced with "((New Paragraph))"
Fixing Paragraphs
8. Press Ctrl+H again and tab to 'Find what:'. Type in "((New Paragraph))"
9. Tab to 'Replace with:' and type ^p^p
10. Tab to and OK 'Replace All'
Now you have a nicely formatted Gutenberg book!
