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: “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!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
{ 4 trackbacks }
{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }
Very helpful, Joe. Thanks!
Thanks for this.
But what about the app's behavior of sending contact data (at least the names of your contacts) to the company?
There are so many people very euphoric about this software and only some did recognize this behavior.
I think this has to be made clear for everybody.
We discussed this in the comments of the post announcing the app. Short version, it's the names only, it is apparently done for recognition purposes, and the EULA prohibits contacting your contacts or giving the data out.
thanks again. then let’s hope for the best
Fantastic tips! Thanks for posting this. This will be very useful, and I'm finding this program to be quite amazing, and works so much better then I would have expected.
How do you stop it putting Victorian. when you want and say Victorian Period?
Presumably you can spell "period" – although I won't have a chance to test this until later.
I just tried saying "Victorian period" and it worked fine. In fact, I tried, "She ushered in the Victorian period period" and it gave me "She ushered in the Victorian period."
so if i want to spell a word out, can I just say the letters or should I say “no space on” B-L-O-G “no space off”?
Actually, Dragon seems to capitalize spelled words, so use "no caps on". You don't need "no space on" for spelled letters, just words you want to run together that normally would be separated by spaces.
Spelling Tip – I was having trouble with my company's name: "NVision". Saying "N" spelled "in". I tried the NATO phonetic alphabet which worked great: (All CAPS) november victor (NO SPACE)(NO CAPS) india sierra oscar november
This worked perfectly. It also does not seem necessary to say "on" or "off" after formatting commands. In fact it often seemed to spell "on". Great guide. Great app.
This APP is IMO the best non jailbroken APP of ‘09. Last night I used the word degrees and it automatically added the proper symbol after the number. I have tried whispering and talking normal with my 2-yr old making noise in the background and it still has yet to make an error.
This guide is awesome! I didn't know about most of these commands…. and I am one of the developers who built the iPhone app.
We all started playing with these commands here in the office. ALL CAPS ON is my favourite.
Gunnar
Thanks for these tips. This make an awesome application even more awesome.
Come on, why not working for the Touch!?!?!?!? Let’s see some solidarity here, people… I’ve got a microphone for my Touch and already use it for voice dictation, so why can’t this app run on the Touch as well?
Works fine on my Touch, second generation. Just need the headphones with the microphone built in.
"open-parenthesis"
At least with the desktop version you need only say "paren."
So how do you actually get the word "period" into your sentences? The app interprets them into punctuation.
Depends on the context. In places where Dragon determines that the sentence is incomplete, it will use the word. If it determines that the sentence is complete, it will use the punctuation. As I mentioned above, I was able to dictate a sentence including "Victorian Period." and it got the two "periods" correct. You can always use "no-caps-on p e r i o d no-caps-off" if you need to force it.
Oh it also dose Smile Face!
Hello,
Any way to force a return? I tried "return," "paragraph," and "para" and none of them seemed to do the trick.
Once I accustomize to the syntax, this will be a big timesaver!
Yes, as noted above:
"New Line" starts the following text on a new line, and "New Paragraph" begins a new paragraph (effectively 1 and 2 carriage returns, respectively).
I’m loving this app! As Peter mentioned above, smileys seem to be available, too… So far, I’ve had luck with “smiley”, “frowny”, and “winky”… Anyone else find any other hidden goodies?
Fantastic app – two requests for the next upgrade: a) add a progress bar so you can tell when your 30 seconds of buffer time is about up, and b) save the buffer so as to handle those cases where the server couldn't be contacted.
THANK YOU! for the helpful comments….Now that the Version 1.1 has the option to NOT upload contact names I feel more comfortable about using this app. I have been a years long user of Dragon Dictate and Naturally Speaking and I welcome this much more portable and connected use of the iPhone. I will continue to use my SONY recorder for longer dictations that I need more sophistocated "user specific" accuracy….but this app is FANTASTIC and your post JOE gives me just the reminders I need to sucessfully adapt to this new platform! THANKS AGAIN JOE!
No, thank you for the kind words and for being a part of our little family here…
Thanks to all for the tips. The use of the NATO alphabet has been immensely helpful. I often us bullet points in my dictation. Has any figured out a way to create these?
I discovered that, when I want Dragon to type a number rather than spelling it out, I can say, "Numeral 5", e.g. and I'll get a "5" rather than "five", but I haven't figured out how to change it back to the words after having gotten it to type the number. … any ideas?
Anyone know how to get it to delete the last word (or more) if you realize you've mis-spoken? I tried "scratch that," which works with the regular Dragon system, but it seems not to work on the app (it actually typed "scratch that" instead).
This link is for Dragon Naturally Speaking 10, but the syntax commands seem to work (it does Roman Numerals!)
How about quotation marks?
can you reply to an email with this app without starting a new email?
"All Caps On" only uses all caps on the next word, and then it automatically goes back to regular text. Is there something else I need to do to get All Caps On to apply to more than just one word? Is this a bug?
Hi Using Dragon Search/Dicatation on a Touch. In Dication you can and Letter/numbers with Phoentics and the Numberal command. Doesn't work in the search application. Not many of these commands do. Any tricks for the search app?
You must log in to post a comment.