// Monday, December 14th, 2009 11:13 am GMT -5 // No Comments » // Personal
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 andno 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 onreallyreallyfast 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 thedollar, 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: “www.justanotheriphoneblog.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!
