Chapter 9

Dipping into Word Processing

In This Chapter

Editing and moving text

Listening to your text

Understanding Natural Language Commands in Word

Formatting and editing with Natural Language

Inserting tables with Natural Language

Working in OpenOffice.org Writer

If you have used NaturallySpeaking for even a short amount of time, you know that there are many different ways of accomplishing the same thing. You can use some applications, such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, and Corel WordPerfect, with Natural Language Commands. (The Home edition doesn’t support Excel or PowerPoint.)

In this chapter, I look at all the ways you can work in Word or WordPerfect for an easy, uncomplicated experience. I discuss how Natural Language Commands make it even more intuitive. At the time of this writing, Word 2010 (English), Word 2013, and WordPerfect X5, X6, and X7 are supported.

If you work with online applications, look at using OpenOffice.org Writer as your word-processing program.

Saying the Right Thing

If you are new to using Dragon NaturallySpeaking with Word, you want to know the quickest ways to find the right thing to say. Here are some things to do when you’re stumped:

• Open the Learning Center. You can always say, “What can I say?” and the Dragon Learning Center will pop up with commands that pertain to the application you are working in. If the application is not supported with specific commands, you’ll see global commands that work in most applications.
• Open the Command Browser. Go to Tools⇒Command Browser and use the Keyword Filter to find the right command. (See Chapter 17.)
• Say, “Give Me Help.” The Dragon Help window opens, and you can say or type a keyword. (When you are done, say, “Close Help.”) You can also say, “Search Dragon Help for <xyz>” or “Search Nuance Support for <xyz>.”
• Say what you see. Natural Language Commands don’t cover everything. You still need to use menus for some functions. You can either use your mouse or voice commands for menu choices. For example, say the menu item, like, “Click View,” and then choose from the pull-down menu that opens.
• Mouse over with your cursor. If you aren’t sure what a particular item is called on the Word menu, mouse over it with the cursor and you’ll see the name of the choice. Then use that name when calling that menu or button.

In Word (2010 and 2013), get to the File Menu items by saying, “File Tab.” This then displays such items as New, Open, Save, and so forth.

Creating, opening, and closing documents

To get started with Word, you don’t need any special Natural Language Commands. You’re already familiar with them. Some of the commands you’ll most likely use are

• “Open Microsoft Word”
• “Open New Document” (You must have Word open already to use this.)
• “Save Document”
• “Close Document”

Employing the “Playback” and “Read” commands

A familiar set of features in Word are “Playback” and “Read That.” Playback lets you play back a recording of your voice to help you proofread. (The Playback feature only comes with the Premium and higher editions.) Read That is the NaturallySpeaking text-to-speech feature. Chapter 7 provides the details of both Playback and Read That.

You can play back your text by menu command and voice command, as well as with the Extras bar. First, select the text you want to hear. The menu command for playback is Audio⇒Playback.

You can have NaturallySpeaking read your selected text aloud by using the “Read That” command.

Natural Language Commands for Word

The worst thing about dealing with computers is that you have to learn their language. Sure, NaturallySpeaking takes dictation, but when you want to tell it what to do with that dictation, you’re back in the same old situation, right? If you don’t like a 10-point font, you have to say something geeky like, “Format That Size 12.”

If an actual human was setting type for you, you wouldn’t say anything remotely like “Format That Size 12,” would you? You’d say, “Make it a little bigger,” and the person would know what to do.

That’s what a Natural Language Command is. It’s a command that sounds like something you would naturally say, in your own language, rather than something you would say only because you’re talking to a computer. In this section, I help you dictate Word documents in a way that might seem fairly natural to you.

Understanding Natural Language Commands

The engineers who built Natural Language Commands for Word believe in freedom of speech. They tried to anticipate any way in which you might want to command Word. I think this task is Herculean, given that people may say anything from, “Bold That Sucker” to “Slice This Turkey into Two Columns.” (You’re probably more restrained.)

Nonetheless, Nuance engineers do succeed in giving you a lot of flexibility with Natural Language Commands.

So, I would be crazy to try to document all the thousands of ways you can give commands, and you wouldn’t be any better off. Instead, I mainly tell you what you can talk about, and tell you the best verbal commands to use.

How do you ultimately know what’s best to say? NaturallySpeaking accepts commands in so many different forms that Nuance suggests you just try speaking a command and see whether it works.

Clever as NaturallySpeaking is, accidentally coming up with a “command” that doesn’t work is still quite possible. And, to add injury to insult, if you’ve selected text in your document when you speak the so-called command that NaturallySpeaking doesn’t recognize, that text is replaced. If that happens, undo the error by saying, “Undo That” or pressing Ctrl+Z. (You may have to repeat that command to totally undo the error.)

If NaturallySpeaking doesn’t perform your command, either NaturallySpeaking doesn’t recognize it as a command or the command can’t be accomplished because the context where you’re trying to use it is incorrect. (See Chapter 20 to see what to do if this happens.) The following sections tell you how to perform many Word commands by using Natural Language Commands.

Dictating text

The simplest way to think about dictating with Natural Language Commands is that you can work with your favorite documents in their natural settings. Word and WordPerfect have similar commands, so for the purposes of my examples, I refer to Word.

Here are a few points to remember about dictating:

• Don’t panic if “Undo That” doesn’t seem to completely restore an error. Speak the command again. You may have to repeat the command several times to restore things as they were.

  Many NaturallySpeaking commands are actually multiple commands as far as your word processor is concerned. “Undo That” undoes only one Word or WordPerfect command at a time.

• NaturallySpeaking’s idea of a paragraph isn’t exactly the same as the Word or WordPerfect version. When you create a paragraph with the “New Paragraph” command, NaturallySpeaking (in effect) presses the Enter key twice. That action creates two paragraphs! (In Word, click the Paragraph [¶] button on the toolbar to see the paragraph marks.) To get a single Word or WordPerfect paragraph, you must use the command “New Line.”
• After a “New Paragraph” command, Dragon capitalizes the first letter of the next sentence. After a “New Line” command, Dragon does the same, but only if the last sentence ended in a period or question mark.

Editing with familiar commands

Natural Language Commands for editing in Word are just what you would expect. Just say something and see if it works.

Here are some familiar ones:

• Undo/Redo: You have the same “Undo That” command in Word that you have anywhere with NaturallySpeaking. (You don’t have a redo command, but you can always say, “Press Ctrl+Y,” instead.)
• Selection: The basic form of the command is “Select <text>,” where <text> is text you can see. You can also use “Select All” to select the whole document.
• Cut, Copy, and Paste: You enjoy the same “Cut That,” “Copy That,” and “Paste That” commands you do elsewhere with NaturallySpeaking. Likewise, you have the “Copy All” command for copying the whole document or “Copy <xyz>” to copy a specific word or words.
• Find and Replace: To use “Find” or “Replace” when in your document, you just say, “Find” or “Replace,” and the Find/Replace box opens. You can also verbally press the hotkey: “Press Control F” (for Find) or “Press Control H” (for Replace). You can also say, “Find and Replace” as a single command.
• Go To: You can “go to” places (move the cursor) just as you can in any other application served by NaturallySpeaking. See Chapter 5 for the commands, which include such favorites as “Go To Top,” “Go To Bottom,” and “Go Back Three Paragraphs.”

A convenient way to go to a specific phrase is to use a Full Text Control command. First, say, “Select <phrase>” (substituting your word or phrase for <phrase>), then say “Move Right One” or “Move Left One.” Your cursor is now positioned just after that phrase.

One of the best editing features of Natural Language Commands has nothing to do with the Edit menu. It’s the “Move That” command. With “Move That,” you can select text and then say, “Move That Down Two Paragraphs,” for instance.

You can replace the word “That” with a reference to any number of words, lines, paragraphs, sections, or pages. For instance, you can say, “Move Next Three Paragraphs to Bottom of Document” or “Move Previous Three Lines Up One Paragraph.”

Inserting

Natural Language Commands can be used for anything on the Insert menu. You can use the Natural Language “Insert <something>” command for page and section breaks, by just saying, “Insert Page Break.” You can also use the command for other whitespace features like lines, tables, and columns. (Whitespace refers to stuff that doesn’t actually put ink on paper.)

Say the word “Insert,” and then immediately say one of the terms in the following list of whitespace <somethings>:

• “Space”
• “Line” or “Blank Line” (both mean the same thing)
• “Paragraph”
• “Section Break” or “Section” (both mean the same thing)
• “Row” (referring to rows in a table)
• “Column” (meaning columnar formatting, or columns within a table)
• “Page Break” or “Page” (both mean the same thing)
• “Table” (see the section on creating tables, later in this chapter)

To insert just one of any in this list, use the singular form, as in “Insert Line.” To insert several, use the plural form and tell NaturallySpeaking how many you want. For instance, say, “Insert Ten Lines.”

NaturallySpeaking makes a paragraph with two presses of the Enter key; a line is one press. In Word, that makes two paragraphs! If you want a single Word paragraph, use “Line” instead of “Paragraph.”

The verb “Insert” can also be used for formatting borders, numbers, and bullets. See the later section “Formatting paragraphs,” in this chapter.

Laying out pages

Natural Language Commands are available for various ways of laying out your document. If you want to verbally control those menus and see what’s there, use the command and then choose from the drop-down menu. For example, you can say, “Page Layout Columns” and then choose the number of columns you want.

Printing

Natural Language Commands for Word offer commands for printing. You can print any number of pages, the current page, or selected text, and you can use Print Preview.

Say “Print,” then one of the following terms (substituting your chosen page numbers for <page number>):

• “Preview On” or “Preview Off”
• “Document”
• “Selection”
• “Page”
• “Page <page number>”
• “Pages <page number> through <page number>”

So, for instance, say, “Print Preview On” or “Print Page.” You can say, “Print This Page” or “Print the Current Page,” too, if you prefer.

Setting up page margins

Natural Language Commands have commands for margins, which are on the File (Office Button) menu. State your marginal commands by saying

“Set Left Right Top Bottom Margin To <distance> <units>”

For example, you can say, “Set Top Margin To One Point Two Inches.” The <distance> in this example is 1.2 and the <units> are inches. Allowable units are inches, centimeters, points, and picas.

You have to set something “to” a distance. For instance, you would say, “Set Top.”

Natural Language Commands for formatting

Formatting is where Natural Language Commands for Word really get interesting, mainly because there is so much more to talk about. You can make things larger or smaller or indent them more or less.

Formatting characters

In Word, you can format characters (choose basic fonts and styles, like bold) using the same commands you use in any other Full Text Control application. See Chapter 6 for instructions.

Natural Language Commands give you additional options for Word, however. I give only a few examples here, using my favorite “Format That” command, and point out where Natural Language Commands add flexibility:

• Font faces: Say, “Format That Arial,” for instance. Natural Language Commands recognize all the fonts in Word.
• Font sizes: Just as in the NaturallySpeaking window, or in WordPerfect with Natural Language Commands, you can say, “Format That Size 14,” or you can add the font size to a font family by saying, “Format That Arial 14.” You can’t, however, say, “Format That 14” (without the font name or the word size). Sizes are limited to the ones Word lists in the toolbar and dialog box. (So, for example, you can’t use odd-numbered sizes in the 20- to 30-point range. NaturallySpeaking types your command as text, if you try.)
• Font styles, colors, and effects: Say, “Format That <style>,” where <style> is anything in the following list. You can apply a style by itself with, for example, “Format That Italics,” or add the style at the end of a longer font command, as in, “Format That Courier Italics.” Say, “Make This,” and then immediately follow with any of the following terms:
  • “Black”
  • “Navy”
  • “Green”
  • “Blue”
  • “Gray”
  • “Red”
  • “Maroon”
  • “Olive”
  • “Teal”
  • “Aqua”
  • “Purple”
  • “White”
  • “Yellow”
  • “No Highlight”
  • “Bold,” “Bolded,” or “Bolding”
  • “Italics” or “Italicized”
  • “Double Strikethrough”
  • “Embossed”
  • “Engraved”
  • “Hidden”
  • “Shadowed”
  • “Superscript”
  • “Subscript”
  • “Underline” or “Underlined”
  • “Double Underlined”
  • “Wavy Underlined”
  • “Thick Underlined”
  • “Strikethrough”
  • “Bigger” or “Larger”
  • “A Little Smaller”
  • “Smaller”
  • “Much Smaller” or “A Lot Smaller”
  • “A Little Bigger” or “A Little Larger”
  • “Much Bigger,” “Much Larger,” “A Lot Bigger,” or “A Lot Larger”
  • “With Hyphens”
  • “Lowercase” or “No Caps”

You can use an imperative verb form of command for certain styles. (Remember imperative verbs from English class? No, me neither, but that’s what they are!) The imperatives for fonts are a short list, as follows:

• “Cap That”
• “Italicize That”
• “Bold That”
• “Underline That”

When you format something, “That” refers to text you have selected or previously uttered. You can say things other than “That” if you like. See the upcoming bullets that talk about equivalent terms.

As with most commands in Natural Language Commands, you can say them in different ways. Here are a few of the variations Natural Language Commands allow for font commands:

• “Make” and “Set” are equivalent to “Format.” For instance, you may say, “Set That Blue” or “Make That Arial 12 Point.”
• You can use “Set It” instead of “Set That,” as in “Set It Normal.” You can also substitute “That” phrases with “Next Three Words” or “Previous Two Paragraphs” to avoid having to select the text first. You can direct your font commands to the previous or next 1 to 20 “Words,” “Lines,” “Paragraphs,” “Pages,” “Sections,” “Columns,” “Tables,” “Rows,” or “Cells,” or to the “Document.”
• You can use the command “Set Font” in place of “It” or “That.” You can use “Set Font Blue,” for instance.

Formatting paragraphs

For formatting paragraphs in Word, I prefer (you guessed it) the “Format That <some formatting>” command. You can use “Format That” no matter whether you’re formatting paragraphs, fonts, or anything else, and this command is easiest for my poor brain to remember.

When you format paragraphs, you can use two other types of commands. Table 9-1 gives the gory details. The top three rows give the conventional commands that work anywhere (left-, right-, and center-align). The remaining rows list commands that Natural Language Commands give you.

NaturallySpeaking gives you no Natural Language command for setting tabs. For most purposes, though, you can use indentation or table commands instead.

Table 9-1 Three Ways to Format Paragraphs in Word

For most work, I suggest my favorite command, “Format That <whatever>.”

“That” refers to paragraphs you have selected or what you previously uttered. See the bullets that follow for other words you can use instead of “That.”

As with font formatting, Natural Language Commands let you say paragraph-formatting commands in different ways. Here are some of the variations Natural Language Commands allow you:

• You can substitute “Justified” for “Aligned.” (And, as you may suspect, you can substitute “Justify” for “Align,” or “Justification” for “Alignment.”)
• You can use the term “Set” or “It” in place of the word “That.”
• You can use the term “Paragraph” in place of “That.” You can also substitute phrases like “Next Three Paragraphs” or “Previous Two Pages” to avoid having to select the text first. You can direct your paragraph commands to the previous or next 1 to 20 “Paragraphs,” “Pages,” “Sections,” “Columns,” “Tables,” “Rows,” or “Cells,” or to the “Document.”
• In Natural Language Commands, the verb “Make” works just as well as “Set” (described in Chapter 6) for changing the formatting of a font or paragraph.

Formatting styles

Want a top-level heading? Say, “Change Style to Heading 1.” Want to redefine what Heading 1 is? Format a paragraph (by voice or by hand), then say, “Remember That As Heading 1.”

If you aren’t familiar with styles, here’s the story in brief: Styles are combinations of font and paragraph formatting that go by a certain name, such as Heading 1. Word comes with certain predetermined styles. You, however, can change what font and paragraph formatting goes with any of the named styles.

You can’t use verbal commands for style names that you create. For example, if you create a style called Indented Quote, you can’t say, “Format That Indented Quote.” Instead, try using the “Remember That As” command to redefine the standard Word styles, like Block Text. Then use those redefined styles. (Your new definition applies only to the current document. To apply it to other documents, you use the Word Style Organizer, but that’s a whole other discussion!)

To apply a style, first click in a paragraph or select some text. Then say, “Set That Selection To,” followed immediately by any of the following phrases:

• “Normal Text” (same as “Normal”)
• “Text” (same as “Body Text”)
• “Body Text”
• “Body Text 2”
• “Body Text 3”
• “Plain Text”
• “A Quote” (same as “Block Text”)
• “Quoted Text” (same as “Block Text”)
• “A Caption”
• “A Heading” (same as “Heading 2”)
• “Heading 1”
• “Heading 2”
• “Heading 3”
• “A Heading 1”
• “A Heading 2”
• “A Heading 3”
• “A Major Heading” (same as “Heading 1”)
• “A Minor Heading” (same as “Heading 3”)
• “A List”
• “List 2”
• “List 3”
• “Bulleted List 2”
• “Bulleted List 3”
• “A Title”
• “A Subtitle”
• “Numbered List 2”
• “Numbered List 3”

Natural Language Commands don’t perform all the Word styles, just the ones I list.

To see what these styles are like, choose Format⇒Style, and the Style dialog box appears (Home⇒Styles). In that dialog box, click in the box marked List, and then choose All Styles. The area marked Paragraph Preview shows you what the current paragraph formatting for that style looks like; the Character Preview area shows you the font currently in use. The Description section lists exactly what font and paragraph formatting the style contains. Many style descriptions begin with “Normal+,” which means the style is based on (uses the same settings as) Normal style, then the settings are modified from there. If you change the Normal style, all the styles are based on Normal change.

Some of the style commands, like the ones for numbered and bulleted styles, sound very much like the paragraph formatting commands, but they really refer to named styles. The number “2” or “3” at the end of certain commands refers to how much the line is indented. A “3” is more indented than a “2.”

As with paragraph and font commands, Natural Language Commands let you say it your way. Here are three ways you can say things:

• If the term “Format” doesn’t seem natural to you, you can use “Make” or “Set.” For instance, you can say, “Make That a Quote.”
• You can use the term “Selection” or “It” instead of the word “That.”
• You can use the term “Paragraph” in place of “That.” You can also substitute phrases like “Next Three Paragraphs” or “Previous Two Pages” to avoid having to select the text first. You can apply your style commands to up to 20 of the previous or next “Paragraphs,” “Pages,” “Sections,” “Columns,” “Tables,” “Rows,” or “Cells,” or to the “Document.”

Editing and formatting text

Natural Language Commands bring to Word all the editing and formatting features of the NaturallySpeaking DragonPad (described in Chapters 5 and 6). See those chapters for the picky details. Here’s an overview of those features and a couple of examples of the verbal commands each uses:

• Ordinary cursor control commands (“Go To Top” or “Move Back Three Words”)
• Ordinary selection (“Select Paragraph” or “Select Previous Three Words”)
• Through (“Select <beginning text> Through <end text>”)
• Correction (“Correct That” or “Correct <text>”)
• Insertion (“Insert Before <text>” or “Insert After <text>”)
• Cut and paste (“Copy That,” “Copy <xyz>” or “Paste That”)
• Deletion (“Delete That,” “Delete <xyz>,” or “Delete Previous Character”)

Checking spelling and grammar

How easy can this be? Following are the commands for the two Microsoft Word tools for spelling and grammar:

• “Check Spelling”
• “Check Grammar”

On the other hand, if you truly are dictating everything in your document using NaturallySpeaking, you should never need to run the spelling checker! NaturallySpeaking never makes a spelling error (unless you added a misspelled word to your NaturallySpeaking vocabulary).

Keep in mind that when you check spelling, the Word spell checker may not recognize words that are in your NaturallySpeaking vocabulary. The two programs maintain their own lists of acceptable words.

Inserting tables

You can use Natural Language Commands to create Word tables with up to 20 rows or columns. Use the commands “Insert,” “Make,” “Add,” or “Create,” as you prefer. I prefer “Insert” because it’s the same command I use for other whitespace insertions like spaces, paragraphs, and page breaks. Here are the different forms of commands you can use (using “Insert” as my example):

• “Insert Table <n> Rows By <m> Columns”
• “Insert <n> By <m> Table”
• “Insert <n> Rows By <m> Columns”

Substitute numbers between 1 and 20 for <n> and <m>. In any of these commands, you can say the columns first and then the rows, or vice versa.

You can leave out either the rows or the columns in any of these commands and then add them later. For instance, “Insert Three Column Table” leaves out any discussion of rows, and so creates a three-column table with one row.

After you have a table, you can verbally move your cursor around in the table, referring to rows, columns, or cells. Commands use either “Move” or “Go” and take forms like these examples:

• “Move Right One Column”
• “Move to Next Row”
• “Go Down Three Cells”

You can move Left, Right, Up, Down, Back, Backward, Ahead, or Forward.

You can add rows or columns using exactly the same sort of command you use to create a table: “Insert,” “Add,” “Make,” or “Create.” Place the insertion point where you want to add stuff, and speak the command.

As usual, I prefer “Insert.” You can insert a number of rows or columns or insert a new row or column. Here are a few examples, using my favorite command, “Insert”:

• “Insert A New Row”
• “Insert Five Rows”
• “Insert Two Columns”

You can select, delete, cut, or copy rows, columns, or cells just as you would words in regular text. For instance, you can use “Select Row” to select the row your cursor is in, or use “Select Next Five Rows.” You can also use “Delete Row” or “Copy Row.” Deleting rows only removes the data from the row, not the row itself. To paste a row, column, or cell you have copied, use “Paste That.” Don’t refer to a row, column, or cell in the command.

Inserting, deleting, and pasting by voice works just as it does when you insert, delete, or paste by hand. That is, rows are inserted above the current row; columns are inserted to the left of the current column.

Adjusting and viewing windows within Word

Natural Language Commands don’t give you any special commands for document windows in Word. If you want to do anything in the Word Window menu — such as use Arrange All to display all open Word documents on the screen — you have to do it manually or with the “Click Window” command. You can, however, make use of the key combination Ctrl+F6 to switch document windows (say, “Press Control F6”). Ctrl+F4 closes a document window (say, “Press Control F4”).

“Close This Document” is a command that you can use in Word to close just the document and leave Word open.

This isn’t to say you can’t switch between the Word window and other program windows. As in any application, you can say, “Switch To <program name>” (if that program is running) or “Switch To Previous/Next Window.”

You can always say, “List All Windows For <program>” to get to the document window you are looking for.

Choosing OpenOffice.org Writer

Want an online suite of office products that you don’t have to license? If so, check out OpenOffice.org. It is an open source program that includes a word processor called Writer and several other applications that resemble the Microsoft Office suite.

People use it so they always have access to the most up-to-date version of the application. (Also, it’s free.) In version 13 of NaturallySpeaking, Nuance has added commands that can be used directly with OpenOffice.org Writer 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3.

The following are some tips you should know if you want to use Writer with NaturallySpeaking:

• With NaturallySpeaking version 11.5 and higher, Writer is a Full Text Control application. This means that you can create, edit, and format content.

  The only higher designation for dictation would be Natural Language Commands, as in Microsoft Word.

• You can use the general navigation commands to edit when you dictate. For example: “Go To,” “Select,” “Line Up,” “Line Down,” “Page Up,” or “Page Down.”
• You have a full range of familiar correction commands: “Scratch That,” “Correct That,” “Correct <word>,” and “Correct <x> Through <y>.”
• Formatting commands are available. For example, “Bold/Italicize/Underline/Cap <x>.”
• When several instances of a word are present, Dragon will number all of them and enable you to either “Choose All” or choose the one you want.