Some Tips For iPhone’s Dragon Dictation App

// Monday, December 14th, 2009 11:13 am GMT -5 // 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!

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