As a former long-time user of Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC, I was eager to see if Dragon Dictation would include the same command syntax. Largely, it has. Here are some tips and a quick reference guide to some of the helpful things you can say during your dictation.
FORMATTING:
Cap to capitalize a word: ‘I was shopping at cap Target”
Caps On for titles: “I was reading caps on The Washington Post”
All Caps to capitalize the next word: “Can we go now all caps PLEASE”
All Caps On and All Caps Off are Caps Lock: “This is all caps on NOT A JOKE all caps off so stop playing”
No Caps, No Caps On, and No Caps Off are the exact opposite of the above: “I like Amy and no caps amy”
Space Bar not only inserts a space, but can be used to prevent a hyphen in normally hyphenated words: ‘A long-lasting or long space bar lasting peace. ‘
No Space for words you want together: ‘Surf on the World no space Wide no space Web ‘
No Space On & No Space Off for words you want together: ‘I was running no space on reallyreallyfast no space off the entire time ‘
New Line starts the following text on a new line, and New Paragraph begins a new paragraph (effectively 1 and 2 carriage returns, respectively).
PUNCTUATION, SYMBOLS, OTHER TIPS:
Say punctuation: period comma apostrophe open-parenthesis close-parenthesis asterisk open quote close quote. Note that you do not need to say apostrophe for possessive names such as ‘Joe ‘s ‘.
There is a difference between a hyphen — like this — and a dash-like this. Similarly, point (in numbers) and period have spacing differences.
Special symbols “ note that many of these will automatically be placed in context, such as the dollar, cent, degree, percent, and at signs:
- % – percent sign
- “ copyright sign
- ® – registered sign
- – section sign
- $ – dollar sign
- “ cent sign
- – degree sign
- ^ – caret
- @ – at sign
- “ pound sterling sign
- # “ pound sign
Note: You must use cent sign explicitly. Saying ‘The price is fifty three cents ‘ will yield ‘The price is $.53 ‘. Say ‘The price is fifty three cent sign ‘.
Email addresses should generally be prefaced with no caps on; most common domains (such as Gmail, Yahoo, etc) are recognized, but you may have to spell others.
Saying ‘www ‘ will result in the formatting of a URL: ‘isource.com/ ‘. Oddly, unlike the desktop version, saying ‘http ‘ does not do the same thing in my testing. I got ‘HDTV ‘ instead.
Hopefully this quick reference will help you make the most of Dragon Dictation. Happy dictating!
I’m starting to use Dragon Dictation more and more on the iPad. It is amazingly adept at sending a quick email, but I was starting to get a little frustrated that all of my text was in one big paragraph and I would spend almost as much time making it look like a proper message as it would have taken me to just type it in the first place.
I did a quick search to just find out how to add lines between my text, and found this great quick-reference on the dictation commands that will work with the app. Not only can you make new lines and paragraphs, but you have complete control over the capitalization, adding punctuation, and more.
I happily dictated an email last night, commanding ‘New Paragraph’ where I wanted one. The only change that I needed to make was to the spelling of the name of the recipient, and the message went quickly on its way. 😀