\"See below\", \"click here\": visual references in articles read aloud
Web articles keep pointing at things the eye can see: a chart below, a link to click, a photo opposite. Read aloud, those references point at nothing. What a reading pipeline should fix, what it should leave alone, and how to write them differently, with French examples tested on our own rules.
Pick any online news article and look for one thing only: the places where the text points. "As the chart below shows." "In the photo opposite, the mayor opens the new square." "For the full figures, click here." "See box, page 4." "Link in bio." There are almost always a few, and that is natural. An article published online is written for a page, surrounded by images, links and boxes.
Read aloud, every one of those references points at nothing. A listener who started the audio in the car or while cooking has no chart in front of them and no link under their finger. They hear "click here", and there is nothing they can do with that sentence. This is not a pronunciation problem: the voice says exactly what is written. It is a writing problem, and it only becomes audible once the article is spoken.
What we checked on our own reading rules
Our speciality is French, so we ran four French versions of these sentences through our reading rules, the deterministic layer that prepares text just before the voice (it expands abbreviations, reads numbers, dates and acronyms). The result is useful because it shows where the line sits between what a tool should fix and what it should leave alone.
- "Voir encadré p. 4." ("See box p. 4.") becomes "Voir encadré page quatre." The abbreviation and the number are expanded, which is the rules' job. The reference itself stays: the listener clearly hears "page four", from an audio file that has no pages.
- "Comme le montre le graphique ci-dessous" ("As the chart below shows") comes out unchanged.
- "Sur la photo ci-contre" ("In the photo opposite") comes out unchanged.
- "Pour le détail, cliquez ici" ("For details, click here") comes out unchanged.
When the article is fetched from a web page, one more thing happens before reading: tag attributes are stripped, including the link's address. Only the link text survives. That is deliberate (nobody wants to hear a URL spelled out), but it means a link whose text is "click here" turns, for the ear, into an instruction with no object.
Why the tool does not rewrite these sentences
You could imagine a rule that turns "below" into "in the chart that comes with this article". We have not written one, on purpose.
First, our preparation removes what is not part of the text (photo credits, captions, "Related" blocks, share prompts, as we explain in what should not be read aloud), but it is instructed not to rewrite the text itself. A "below" in the middle of a sentence belongs to the sentence. Removing it changes what the author wrote, and replacing it means writing in the author's place.
Second, the right rewording depends on what is actually on the page. "The chart below" might become "this chart, published with the article", or "here are the figures" followed by the figures, or simply disappear because the next sentence already says what matters. No rule can tell which one fits. That is an editor's call. It is also what separates French text to speech that prepares text from a tool that reinvents it: the first fixes form (abbreviations, numbers, acronyms) and leaves meaning to whoever wrote it.
The five most common references, and how to rewrite them
The good news: most of these references can be rewritten once, in the published text, without taking anything away from people reading on screen.
The "click here" link. The easiest one, and useful well beyond audio. Link text that says where it leads is also what accessibility guidelines ask for, because screen readers announce links out of context. "For details, click here" becomes "The detailed figures are in the region's annual report." On screen, the link sits on "the region's annual report". Read aloud, the sentence actually says something.
The chart "below". Say what the chart shows instead of where it is. "As the chart below shows, sales are rising" becomes "Sales have risen for three quarters running, by 4% on average." Readers keep their chart, listeners get the information. For images that carry meaning, image descriptions go further by making their content audible.
The photo "opposite". Often you can just drop the reference: "The mayor opened the square on Saturday" works with or without the picture.
"See box, page 4". Carried over from a print edition, it already makes no sense online. Delete it, or fold the useful sentence from the box into the body.
"Link in bio", "in the comments", "in the video". These belong to the social network the text was copied from. They have no place in the article, on screen or in the ear.
When the published text cannot change
Sometimes the published text must stay as it is: an archive piece, a signed column, a version cleared by legal. In that case the audio can read a text that differs from the page. The "Text read" button in the dashboard lets you choose what the audio reads: you paste a version where "the chart below" has become a sentence, and every later regeneration reads that version, even if your CMS sends the page again.
It takes a few minutes per article, so keep it for the pieces that deserve it. For everything else, a writing habit beats a patch. A writer who knows the piece will be heard writes "the region's annual report" rather than "click here", and never has to come back to it. It is the same instinct as writing for the ear in general: a text that stands on its own, without pointing at things the listener cannot see.
A test to run on one of your articles
Take your latest illustrated article. Search for "below", "above", "opposite", "click", "see" and "page" (or "ci-dessous", "ci-dessus", "ci-contre", "cliquez", "voir" and "page" if you publish in French). For each hit, ask one question: if I only had the sound, would this sentence tell me anything? If not, rewrite it. Readers on screen will almost always gain as much as listeners do.
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