Chapter 5

Selecting, Editing, and Correcting in DragonPad

In This Chapter

Using voice commands to move the cursor

Selecting text

Inserting and deleting text

Undoing actions after you change your mind

Correcting NaturallySpeaking mistakes and training it to do better

In my most optimistic moments, I like to imagine that I will write a document (like this chapter) by starting at the beginning and continuing flawlessly to the end. I’ve heard of such miracles, but unfortunately have never experienced one myself. Whether you write your documents by hand, use a keyboard to enter them into a computer, or dictate them to an assistant, from time to time you’re probably going to want to insert new text into the middle of the document, delete some text, rearrange a few paragraphs, and rewrite a sentence here and there.

If you prefer, you can continue using the mouse and keyboard to do this editing, just as if you had never heard of NaturallySpeaking. In fact, dictating your first drafts and editing by keyboard isn’t a bad way to get your feet wet with NaturallySpeaking. And you can add the editing voice commands to your repertoire as you get more experienced.

Or you can plunge right in and do all your editing by voice, just as if you were dictating your changes to a real person instead of your virtual NaturallySpeaking assistant. But, unlike a real person, your assistant works nights and holidays without complaining and never rolls its eyes when you rewrite a sentence for the tenth time. (Yeah, I’ve done that too.)

In addition to making changes that are a normal part of your creative process, you also want to correct the errors that get into your documents whenever your NaturallySpeaking assistant thinks that you said something different from what you actually said. Occasional mistakes of this sort (known as recognition errors) are inevitable, just as occasional typographical errors always manage to sneak into typed documents. The NaturallySpeaking mistakes tend to be funnier than typos, because they are correct English words that sometimes give your sentences entirely new and unintended meanings (for example, “Quoth the raven, ‘Never bore.’”).

Although you can just write (or dictate) over these mistakes, NaturallySpeaking has a special correction procedure that teaches it not to make similar mistakes in the future. Just as you teach your children to perfect their language skills by correcting their errors, you teach your NaturallySpeaking assistant to understand you better by using the correction procedure.

Moving Around in a Document

When you’re in a cab, you can tell the driver where to go in three ways (excluding the ever-popular “Follow that car”):

• You can give directions, as in “Turn left and go three blocks.”
• You can specify a location without saying what’s there, as in “Go to 49th and Madison.”
• You can name a destination without saying where it is and count on the driver to find it, as in “Take me to the airport.”

The same basic ideas work when you tell NaturallySpeaking where to move the cursor in its document window. You have two options:

• You can give a directional command like “Move Up Five Lines.”
• You can say some text and count on NaturallySpeaking to find it by saying, “Insert After wish you were here.”

These commands are summarized in Table 5-1, as well as in the “What Can I Say?” topic of NaturallySpeaking Help. To display this topic, speak the command “What Can I Say” and the Dragon Learning Center will pop up with suggestions (if it isn’t open already). The following sections of this chapter provide more detailed instructions for using these commands and their various synonyms.

You don’t have to use the voice commands if you’d rather not. The mouse and the arrow keys on the keyboard can also move the cursor. It’s your choice.

Giving the cursor directions and distances

You can use the “Move” command to move the cursor in different directions: forward or backward a certain number of characters, words, lines, or paragraphs. The short form of the “Move” command uses just three words (as in “Move Down Three”).

The short, three-word version of the “Move” command imitates the cursor keys on the keyboard. The three words are “Move,” a direction (“Up, “Down,” “Left,” or “Right”), and finally a number from “1” to “20.” You don’t specify any units. So, for example:

• “Move Down 12” gives you the same result as if you press the down-arrow key 12 times. In other words, the cursor goes down 12 lines.
• “Move Right 2” moves the cursor two characters to the right, the same result you get from pressing the right-arrow key twice.

When you want to move a certain number of words, just add “Words” to the command. Use the four-word “Move” command. First you say “Move”; then say a direction (“Back” or “Forward”); then say a number (“1” – “20”); and finally, say a unit (“Words”). For example, “Move Back Six Words.”

You can also use the units “Characters” or “Lines” instead of “Words.” When the units are “Words” or “Characters,” you can use “Left” or “Right” instead of “Back” or “Forward.” When the units are “Lines,” you can use “Up” or “Down” instead of “Back” or “Forward.” For example, “Move Left Three Characters” means the same as “Move Back Three Characters” or “Move Left Three.”

Finally, the word “a” can be used as a synonym for the number 1. “Move Back a Word” is the same as “Move Back One Word.”

If you just want to scroll the text up or down, and you don’t care about moving the cursor, say “Press Page Up” or “Press Page Down.” The “Start Scrolling Down” and “Start Scrolling Up” commands work in word processors now, too.

Going to the head of the line

Like telling your cab driver to go to the end of a street, you can tell NaturallySpeaking to go the beginning or end of various chunks of a document: the beginning or end of the document, current line, or whatever block of text is selected. (The current line is the line where the cursor is now.)

The simplest destination commands are

• “Go To Bottom,” which moves the cursor to the end of the document
• “Go To Top,” which moves the cursor to the beginning of the document
• “Go To Top (or Bottom) of Line (or Selection)”

NaturallySpeaking understands a number of synonyms for these commands. In particular, you can use “Move To” instead of “Go To” as long as you specify the chunk of text you’re moving within. Begin with “Move To” and then use “Start,” “Beginning,” or “End,” and then specify, “Line,” “Selection,” or “Document.”

Sometimes NaturallySpeaking understands one form of a command more consistently than another. For example, when I say, “Go To,” it’s often interpreted as “due to,” “do to,” or “good.” I’m sure I could eventually train NaturallySpeaking to recognize my slurring pronunciation of “Go To,” but I find it easier just to say, “Move To” instead.

Don’t make the mistake of saying “Go to” or “Move to” followed by a word instead of a location. The only way you can tell Dragon to move to a word is by using the “Insert Before XYZ” (or “Insert After XYZ”) command.

Specifying a destination by quoting text

Sometimes you want to put the cursor right smack in the middle of a block of text on your screen, not near the beginning or end of anything. And you’d rather not count lines or words or characters. You’d like to tell NaturallySpeaking to put the cursor after this phrase or before that one.

You want the “Insert” command. Suppose you dictated, “She sells seashells by the sea shore,” and you want to put the cursor between “sells” and “seashells.” You can say,

• “Insert After sells” or
• “Insert Before seashells”

Each of these commands accomplishes the same result.

If the words “sells” and “seashells” appear in several locations, you will see all the instances numbered. You can choose the one you want.

If text is selected already, you can move the cursor to the beginning or the end of the selected text by using the commands “Insert Before That” or “Insert After That.” These commands are equivalent to “Go To Beginning of Selection” and “Go To End of Selection,” respectively.

Editing by Voice

Editing a document involves several activities: inserting new text, deleting text, replacing text by dictating over it, and rearranging the document by cutting text from one place and pasting it into another. All these topics are covered in this section. I discuss reformatting text in Chapter 6.

You can use these techniques to fix the NaturallySpeaking mistakes as well as your own. But in the long run, you’ll be happier with your NaturallySpeaking assistant’s performance if you teach it to do better by using the correction commands. See “Fixing NaturallySpeaking’s Mistakes,” later in this chapter.

Because NaturallySpeaking can transcribe only the words in its vocabulary, both your errors and its own are cleverly disguised as actual English words. They’re even correctly spelled. In these circumstances, proofreading becomes an art. Be sure to check out the proofreading tricks in Chapter 7.

Selecting text

You can select text in three ways:

• Select text near the cursor by using commands like “Select Next Two Characters.”
• Select text by saying it, as in “Select we’ll always have Paris.”
• Select a large block of text by saying the beginning and the end, as in “Select once upon a time through lived happily ever after.”

Table 5-2 summarizes these commands.

Selecting text near the cursor

To select text immediately before or after the current location of the cursor, use the Select command in a four-word sentence of this form: “Select,” followed by a direction (“Next” or “Previous”), followed by a number (“<1–20>”), followed by a unit (“Characters,” “Words,” or “Paragraphs”). For example:

• “Select Next Seven Words”
• “Select Previous Three Paragraphs”

If you want to select only one character, word, or paragraph, leave the number out of the sentence, as in “Select Next Character” or “Select Previous Word.”

You can use “Back” or “Last” as synonyms for “Previous,” and “Forward” as a synonym for “Next.”

Selecting text by saying it

If text is visible on your screen, you can select it by saying, “Select” and then saying the text you want to select. For example, suppose Shakespeare is editing the file Hamlet.doc, and the phrase “To be or not to be” is visible. He can select the phrase by saying, “Select to be or not to be.”

Sometimes, the phrase you select occurs several times in the current window. Which occurrence is selected? NaturallySpeaking will display numbers next to the text and you select the one you want.

Selecting more text than you want to say

When you want to select a large block of text, you don’t want to have to repeat all of it just to tell NaturallySpeaking where it is. NaturallySpeaking provides a special command for this purpose: “Select … Through.” Pick a word or two at the beginning of the selection and a word or two at the end, and then tell NaturallySpeaking to select everything in between by saying, “Select <beginning text> Through <end text>.” For example, if your NaturallySpeaking window contains the Pledge of Allegiance, you can select it all by saying, “Select I pledge allegiance Through justice for all.”

Deleting text

The simplest way to delete text is to use the “Scratch That” command to delete recently dictated text, as I explain in Chapter 4. You can use “Scratch That” up to ten consecutive times. Another way to delete recently dictated text is the “Resume With” command, also covered in Chapter 4.

To delete text immediately before or after the current location of the cursor (as outlined in Table 5-3), begin with “Delete” and then give a direction (“Next” or “Previous”), a number (“1” – “20”), and finally a unit (“Characters,” “Words,” or “Paragraphs”). For example:

• “Delete Next Seven Words”
• “Delete Previous Three Paragraphs”

If you want to delete only one character, word, or paragraph, you can leave the number out of the sentence, as in the following:

• “Delete Next Character”
• “Delete Previous Word”

You can use “Back” or “Last” as synonyms for “Previous,” and you can use “Forward” as a synonym for “Next.”

Saying “Backspace” gives the same result as pressing the Backspace key on the keyboard: The character immediately behind the cursor is deleted. To backspace up to 20 characters, say, “Backspace,” followed by a number between 1 and 20. “Backspace” is a simpler version of the “Delete Previous Character” command. For example, saying, “Backspace Five” produces the same results as saying, “Delete Previous Five Characters.”

You can turn off the “Delete XYZ” command by choosing DragonBar⇒Tools⇒ Options⇒Commands. You may find yourself accidentally deleting text in a document and not understand why.

Sharp tongues: Cutting and pasting by voice

To cut or copy text from a document, select it (using the techniques from the “Selecting text” section earlier in this chapter) and then say either “Cut That” or “Copy That.” To copy the entire document (which is useful if you like to compose in the NaturallySpeaking DragonPad or Dictation Box and then paste the results into an application), say, “Copy All to Clipboard.”

If something is on the clipboard, you can paste it into your document by saying, “Paste That.” You can also now say, “Copy XYZ” or “Cut XYZ.”

Just undo it

Sometimes the result of editing or dictating something isn’t what you pictured. All is not lost; you can still undo it. Just say, “Undo That” or “Undo Last Action.” These two commands are equivalent.

In the NaturallySpeaking window, “Undo That” is like flipping a switch: If you say it twice, you wind up back where you started. In other words, the second “Undo That” undoes the first “Undo That.” When you use NaturallySpeaking with other applications, what you get varies from one application to another. In some applications, saying, “Undo That” twice undoes the application’s last two actions.

What “Undo That” actually does is type a Ctrl+Z. Different applications handle a Ctrl+Z in different ways, which is why they respond to “Undo That” differently.

Fixing NaturallySpeaking’s Mistakes

Even though NaturallySpeaking 13 is 99 percent accurate out of the box, it will occasionally make a hilarious error. That’s because NaturallySpeaking is incapable of a simple typo or misspelling. All its mistakes are still correct English words — just not the words you said or meant to say. But as funny as some mistakes might be, you don’t want to create documents that amuse your readers because of unintentional errors. You want those mistakes fixed, preferably in a way that keeps them from happening again the next time you dictate. That’s what NaturallySpeaking’s “Correct That” and related correction commands are for.

If you don’t care about correcting NaturallySpeaking, and all you want to do is remove an error from the document you’re working on, just select the offending text and dictate something else over it. Or, if you catch the error immediately, you can get rid of it by saying “Scratch That” or “Undo That,” as described in “Editing by Voice,” earlier in this chapter.

If you make any corrections during a session, NaturallySpeaking reminds you to save your speech files before exiting. Be sure to choose Yes. Otherwise, all the lessons NaturallySpeaking learned from these corrections are lost.

Correcting a NaturallySpeaking recognition error

Depending on how quickly you catch the error, you can correct it in one of the following two ways:

• If you catch the error as soon as NaturallySpeaking makes it, say, “Correct That” or “Spell That.” See “Casting a spell,” later in this chapter for more about “Spell That.”
• If you don’t catch the error immediately, say, “Correct <incorrect text>.” (You can also select the erroneous text verbally or with your voice and then say, “Correct That.”)

Table 5-4 summarizes these ways of making a correction. If you would rather not use voice commands at all, select the text and then press the – (minus) key on the numeric keypad of your keyboard or click the Correct button on the NaturallySpeaking DragonBar Extras section. (You can substitute a different key for the – [minus] key; see the discussion of NaturallySpeaking options in Chapter 3.)

No matter how you do it, the Correction menu box appears, as shown in Figure 5-1.

The dictation error that Figure 5-1 illustrates occurred when I said, “W. S. Gilbert had a flair for puns.” What NaturallySpeaking thought I said was, “W. S. Gilbert had a flare for ponds.” When I said, “Correct That,” the Correction menu box shown in Figure 5-1 appeared.

NaturallySpeaking chose some alternative interpretations of what I said, listed in the box, up to a maximum of nine. Figure 5-1 shows NaturallySpeaking got most of the phrase right.

If the correct phrase is listed in the Correction menu box, you need only tell NaturallySpeaking which number it is. If I had said, “W. S. Gilbert had a flair for ponds,” then I could make the correction in Figure 5-1 by saying “Choose 1.” You can also click the correct version with the mouse. When you indicate your choice, the Correction dialog box closes and the correction is made in the text.

Sometimes, none of the options offered is correct, as is the case in Figure 5-1. In those instances, you should try to redictate over the highlighted text. If Dragon gets it wrong again, say, “Spell That.” The Spelling Window opens. Start spelling the correct version aloud. (See “Casting a spell,” later in this chapter.) With each new letter, more alternatives appear in the box as NaturallySpeaking continues trying to guess what the correct version is. If the correct version appears, you can stop typing or spelling and choose it by number. The Correction menu box closes and the correction is made in the text.

Here are two additional reminders and tips:

• Don’t attempt to dictate replacement text in the Spelling Window. NaturallySpeaking tries to interpret your utterances as letters!
• If you are correcting a large block of text, you can say, “Correct <beginning of incorrect text> Through <end of incorrect text>.”

Casting a spell

One way to correct a simple mistake is to select the mistaken word and spell the correct one. You can do this from the Correction menu by saying “Spell That” if you don’t see the choice you want.

Suppose you dictated “New York” and NaturallySpeaking interpreted it as “Newark.” You could correct it as follows:

1. Find the mistaken word, “Newark,” in the active window.
2. Say, “Select Newark.”

   If NaturallySpeaking hears you correctly this time, the mistaken word is selected. If “Newark” occurs several times in the active window, you may need to say, “Choose ‘n’” to select the occurrence that you want to correct. See “Selecting text by saying it,” earlier in this chapter.

3. Say, “Spell That” and the Spelling Window opens. Say, “Cap N-e-w space bar cap Y-o-r-k.” Or you can use the International Communications Alphabet by saying, “Spell That cap November Echo Whiskey space bar cap Yankee Oscar Romeo Kilo.”

   The Spelling Window now has the correctly spelled “New York” selected. You will also see the choices to say “Play That Back,” “Train,” and “Tell Me More about This Window” (for help). These are described in the next section.

4. Say “Click OK” or “Press Enter.” Or you can click the OK button or press the Enter key.

   NaturallySpeaking replaces the incorrect “Newark” in the text with the correct “New York.” Also, NaturallySpeaking makes an invisible little note to remind itself not to be so quick to hear “Newark” instead of “New York.” (See the later sidebar “Bravo! Charlie Tangos with Juliet in November,” for more about the International Communications Alphabet, or ICA.)

But what if you didn’t see the choice you wanted? You could choose the Spell That option from the Correction menu and bring up the Spelling Window, shown in Figure 5-2. Follow these steps:

1. Choose “Spell That” from within the Correction menu.

   The Spelling Window appears with several choices. One of the choices is in the typing window.

2. Click in the typing window if you want to type your correction, or start spelling it if you want to use a verbal command.
3. Say “Click OK” or “Press Enter.” Or you can click the OK button or press the Enter key.

If you use a lot of proper nouns (names of people, places, and things), learning the ICA might be worthwhile. You can use the ICA to spell a word even during dictation, not just in the Correction menu box.

Recurring errors

The correction process is supposed to prevent the same errors from happening in the future, but sometimes NaturallySpeaking makes a particular error a couple of times. In these cases, you need something stronger than just correction; you need to train NaturallySpeaking (otherwise known as boot camp for assistants).

Begin by identifying the error and typing or dictating the correct version into the Correction menu box. Then say, “Spell That” and the Spelling Window opens. Instead of clicking the OK button in the Spelling Window, click Train. This opens the Train Words dialog box, where you record the correct word. See Chapter 17 for detailed instructions.

Playing back an error

NaturallySpeaking includes a Playback feature that you can use to listen to your dictation. In particular, when you are correcting a mistake, you can click the “Play That Back” link in the Correction dialog box to hear what you said. You may discover that you aren’t dealing with a recognition error at all and that you didn’t say what you think you said. See Chapter 7 for more about the Playback feature.