Chapter 17

Additional Training for Accuracy

In This Chapter

Using the Accuracy Center

Recognizing when and how to train words

Knowing when and how to add vocabulary words

Adding the words you want in vocabulary building

Creating shortcuts

Doing more training

Deciding when and how to train commands

If your NaturallySpeaking assistant doesn’t appear to be quite as sharp as you’d like it to be, you can teach it to do better. Dragon gives you a central place — the Accuracy Center — from which to improve its skills. If you start there, you will find all the tools you need at your fingertips. You can also find training options in other DragonBar menus, but if you are new to the software, this is the best place to start.

Using the Accuracy Center

Training and improving NaturallySpeaking is the key to an almost flawless experience over time. Take the time to work with the software and train it to understand your special way of communicating.

Go to the Accuracy Center from DragonBar⇒Help⇒Improve My Accuracy, or say, “Open Accuracy Center” from the Help menu. You’ll see the following sections, as shown in Figure 17-1:

• Personalize your vocabulary: Use the Vocabulary Editor to build your personal library of words and let your assistant build your special vocabulary by “reading” your documents and e-mails.
• Set options and formatting: Here you see how to set the Options menu to personalize your settings.
• Adjust your acoustics: Launch your Accuracy Tuning and check your microphone.
• Find or train commands: This section shows you what commands are available to you in a variety of different contexts.
• Get more information: Here you find information directly from the NaturallySpeaking Help menu pertaining to vocabularies.

Yikes, lots of choices! Nobody said that educating software was effortless, but this chapter familiarizes you with what to do, and when and how to do it.

Personalizing Your Vocabulary

Personalizing your vocabulary involves two functions. The first is vocabulary editing, which lets you add words to the NaturallySpeaking vocabulary and, optionally, train NaturallySpeaking in how you say those words. It also lets you add custom phrases that translate into text. For example, you can say, “My Address,” and NaturallySpeaking types your address. The second function is vocabulary building, which uses documents and e-mails to build your existing vocabulary. I cover both of those in the following sections.

Vocabulary editing

You can directly add words to the NaturallySpeaking active vocabulary. The Vocabulary Editor is your tool to add or delete any word you have added but no longer use. It also has special features that allow you to do any of the following:

• Train NaturallySpeaking in your own, personal pronunciation of a word, for better recognition.
• Add special words or phrases to the vocabulary, like your company name, properly capitalized or hyphenated, or jargon that you use in your profession.
• Give awkward words or phrases a different “spoken form” to make dictation easier, like saying, “My E-Mail” for [email protected]. These are called shortcuts.
• Come up with alternative ways to say words, punctuation, or whitespace characters, like saying “Full Stop” for a period.

Although I talk about mouse commands here, you can use voice commands to control the Vocabulary Editor, too.

Adding a new word or phrase

Adding a word tells NaturallySpeaking that you want to include something new to its vocabulary. The accompanying Word training also teaches NaturallySpeaking how you say a word.

No matter whether you say the word bear as “beer,” “beyah,” or “bayrrr,” word training can tune NaturallySpeaking’s ear to your pronunciation. If NaturallySpeaking is having trouble recognizing specific words, word training may be your solution. Word training is most helpful when your pronunciation of a word is unique or not at all like its spelling. For example, in New York, Houston Street is pronounced “Houseton.” In Texas, it’s pronounced “Hueston.”

To add a new word or phrase, from the Accuracy Center click Add a New Word or Phrase. Up pops the Add Word or Phrase box, as shown in Figure 17-2.

You can train words without going to the Accuracy Center, too. Just say, “Select <word or words>” to select a word in your document, and when the Correction menu comes up, say, “Add That to Vocabulary” and the same dialog box appears. Note the option will be grayed out if the word is already in your vocabulary.

To add words, follow these steps:

1. Spell or type the word you want to add in the left prompt box.
2. In the right prompt box, type or spell the spoken form of the word.

   NaturallySpeaking uses a pronunciation guesser to figure out how most terms sound from the spelling. However, lots of jargon, acronyms, and other terms don’t conform to standard rules of English pronunciation. Sometimes you can type a spoken form that gives NaturallySpeaking something better to guess from.

   But, whether you enter a written and spoken form or just a written form, if the pronunciation you’re going to use isn’t obvious from the spelling, you should train NaturallySpeaking in how you pronounce the word. That’s why you see a check box that lets you choose to train the pronunciation of the word or phrase. You can use the word training feature to make sure NaturallySpeaking recognizes your word or phrase.

   For example, you may want NaturallySpeaking to write “Boston and Maine Railroad” when you speak the phrase “B&M.” Enter the written form Boston and Maine Railroad and the spoken form B and M or it could be bee and em for example.

3. After you type in the word or phrase, click OK.

   The Train Words dialog box displays in large type the spoken form of the term (or the written form if you haven’t entered a spoken form), as shown in Figure 17-3. I chose to train the word “prewash.”

4. Click Go.

   Speak the phrase into your microphone exactly as you always say it.

5. Click the Done button after you’ve spoken the term.

What if word training isn’t enough? Perhaps you speak your newly trained word, and NaturallySpeaking still gets it wrong. If two terms sound alike, NaturallySpeaking chooses one by looking at how you have used the term in the past, in context.

If you have recently added this term (say, in the Vocabulary Editor), NaturallySpeaking has little or no context for the term. You haven’t used it in a phrase, so NaturallySpeaking is more likely to choose the term with which it has more experience. The solution is to dictate your new term in context and then correct NaturallySpeaking with “Correct That” when it chooses the wrong term. If you dictate the new word and correct NaturallySpeaking with the Correction dialog box, it will catch on and use the new term.

Adding shortcuts in the Vocabulary Editor

To add custom terms to the NaturallySpeaking active vocabulary, click the Open the Vocabulary Editor link from the Accuracy Center (or you can launch the Vocabulary Editor by choosing Vocabulary⇒Open Vocabulary Editor from the DragonBar menu or speak the commands). Then follow these steps:

1. Enter the term in the Search For box at the top of the Vocabulary Editor.

   In Figure 17-4, for example, I entered an e-mail address, [email protected].

   To see what’s in the vocabulary, you can either scroll the list in the Vocabulary Editor or type the term in the Search For box. As you type, the list scrolls to match your typing.

   If you want to speak something other than what’s typed, first add the word by clicking Add. In the Add New Word or Phrase dialog box that appears, enter the way you want to say the word in the text box labeled Spoken Form (If Different). For example, if I enter My E-Mail there, I can simply say, “My E-Mail” and have NaturallySpeaking type [email protected]. If you use a term in the Spoken Form box that NaturallySpeaking doesn’t already have in its vocabulary, a dialog box lets you know that fact. It also asks whether you want it to assign an approximate pronunciation. Click OK.

   

2. After you enter a written (and, if different, spoken) form of the term, click the Add button.

   If you think the pronunciation will be difficult, select the I Want to Train check box before clicking the Add button and record the word as directed. The Vocabulary Editor adds the term to the vocabulary list and marks it with a plus sign (+). You can delete any custom term you add. Just click the term, and then click the Delete button. You can also select multiple terms to delete by holding down the Ctrl button as you click.

3. Click the Close button.

Creating different ways to say the same thing

The period at the end of this sentence has more aliases (alternative names) than most criminals. The words period, decimal point, dot, point, stop, and full stop are all valid names for that same symbol in different contexts. NaturallySpeaking doesn’t currently recognize all those alternative spoken names, but you can add them to the vocabulary.

If you have an alternative spoken name you would like to use for a word, phrase, or symbol, use the Vocabulary Editor to add that name. Unfortunately, you can’t change any of the existing names, even if you don’t like them. You can only add an alternative.

To add aliases, whether for symbols, numbers, or other terms, launch the Vocabulary Editor (choose Vocabulary⇒Open Vocabulary Editor) and then do the following:

1. Type the term or symbol that needs an alias in the Search For text box.

   The list scrolls to show the current written and spoken forms.

   To see all the currently defined symbols and dictation commands in the Vocabulary Editor, you must scroll up above the terms beginning with “a.”

2. Click the Add button.

   The Add New Word or Phrase dialog box appears.

3. Type a new term in the Spoken Form box, and then click the Add button.

   A second copy of the word appears in the vocabulary list, with your new alias and a plus sign (+) to mark the alias as a custom term. (If the alias doesn’t work out, you can delete it. Just click the line and then click the Delete button.)

When you change the spelling of a word, the new word does not have the same context data assigned to it as the original — which can be good or bad. For example, if you add a new version of the word center spelled centre, Dragon loses the context data that tells it what words appear near it. To have alternate written forms of words, you should change the properties of existing words by choosing DragonBar⇒Vocabulary⇒Open Vocabulary Editor, select the word center, and then click the Properties button.

Import a list of words or phrases

If you’re likely to use terms from some specialized vocabulary in the documents you dictate, you can make a list of such terms and give them all to NaturallySpeaking in one fell swoop. For example, Queen’s Gambit Declined is the name of a chess opening. Each of the three words is surely already in the NaturallySpeaking General English vocabulary, but NaturallySpeaking doesn’t know that these three words have a special capitalization pattern when they appear together. If you were to dictate documents about chess, you would want to include Queen’s Gambit Declined on one line of your list.

You can create a list and use the Import List of Words or Phrases box, as shown in Figure 17-5.

Follow these steps:

1. Create a text file in which each line is the written form of a vocabulary entry you want to add.
2. At the end of any line where you want a different spoken form, add a backslash (/) and then the shorthand alias you want to speak.
3. From the Accuracy Center, click the Import a List of Words or Phrases link or use the mouse or commands, and from the DragonBar go to Vocabulary⇒Import List of Words or Phrases.

   A screen pops up with the words “Import List of Words or Phrases.” You also see the option to “Preview the list of unknown words.” If you wish to do that, select the box.

4. Click Next.

   You are asked to add the file.

5. Click the Add File button.

   The file is analyzed.

6. Click Finish.

   A Summary box shows you how many words were added to your vocabulary.

A few wise ideas can save you time and trouble while adding words by using the Import method:

• Review the list of words to make sure they are real words that you really want.
• Don’t add words that you use infrequently. This is especially true if they sound like some other word that you use often.
• Sometimes individual proper nouns that you want from a document are actually common words, except that their capitalization (or lack of capitalization) makes them special for you — a sports team named Bingo, for example, or an Internet domain that uses a person’s name.

Learning from specific documents

At this step, you provide your NaturallySpeaking assistant with documents so that it can look at them and pick out any words or capitalized phrases it doesn’t recognize. (In essence, it’s automatically building a list like the one you may have provided, as the preceding section describes.) The more documents you give Vocabulary Builder, the better. In particular, give it documents that resemble the documents you want to dictate — your previous best-seller, for example, or a collection of your office memos.

Giving the Vocabulary Builder documents that resemble other documents is a great way for Dragon to add words and learn when you use those words — which updates your language model. Dragon looks at words before and after every word you say and uses context knowledge about how certain words are used. This increases accuracy and helps Dragon tell the difference between words like ice cream and I scream. It is also a good idea to run the Vocabulary Builder on documents that have words Dragon does not know. In this way, you are adding words to the vocabulary and teaching Dragon when and how you use those words.

Spell-check the documents before you analyze them. The vocabulary-building function looks for words it doesn’t already know, and it thinks it has found one whenever it runs into a misspelled word. You save yourself some time if you spell-check your documents and correct any misspelled words before giving the documents to Vocabulary Builder.

To add words from specific documents in Word, WordPerfect, plain text, RTF (Rich Text Format), and HTML (web) documents, follow these steps:

1. From the Accuracy Center, click the Learn from Specific Document link or choose Vocabulary⇒Learn from Specific Documents from the DragonBar.

   A Learn from Specific Documents screen pops up, as shown in Figure 17-6. On this screen, you have the option to Find Unknown Words (in various forms) or Adapt to Writing Style.

   

2. Select the check box next to each option you want to add and then click Next.

   A new screen appears with buttons to add either folders of documents or single documents to analyze.

3. Click the buttons to add your files.

   Your Windows Browse window opens, allowing you to choose the files as you normally do. Next, the files show up in the window of the Learn from Specific Documents screen.

4. Click Next.

   Your documents are analyzed. A check mark appears next to the names of the documents analyzed. All the words that were new to your vocabulary are shown with check marks and the frequency with which they occurred.

5. If you want to add all the words on the list, click Next.

   You see a list of the words, and the screen asks you to check the words you want to train.

6. Check the ones you think should be trained for pronunciation.

   The Train Words dialog box displays, in large type, the written form of the term.

7. Click Go.

   Speak the phrase into your microphone exactly as you always say it.

8. Click Next.

   A Summary box shows you how many words were added to your vocabulary.

9. Click Finish.

Adding words from somebody else’s documents

Normally, you use your own documents to teach NaturallySpeaking about your vocabulary. What can you do, however, for a subject that you have not written much about?

Answer: Grab words from documents other people have written. The web, for example, is full of documents about nearly any subject you can name. The trick is to have NaturallySpeaking pick up on the words, but not the writing style, of this other author (unless you intend to write just like him or her).

To use someone else’s documents, first you must get the documents! NaturallySpeaking can read Microsoft Word or WordPerfect documents if you have Word or WordPerfect installed. It can also read plain text, RTF, and HTML documents. To get documents from the web, browse to the page you want, and then save the page as an HTML file. In Internet Explorer, for example, choose File⇒Save As, enter a filename in the dialog box that appears, and click Save.

Use these documents in the Add Words from Documents box as you would any other documents. When you get to the Adapt to Writing Style check box, deselect it so your NaturallySpeaking assistant won’t assume that you write like that other writer.

Learning from sent e-mails

Analyzing e-mails is another way for your NaturallySpeaking assistant to build your vocabulary. This process helps in two ways. It learns from the style of your e-mails and it can automatically add e-mail addresses you currently use. It works with Microsoft Outlook, Outlook.com, Lotus Notes, Gmail, Yahoo!, and Windows Live Mail.

From the Accuracy Center, click Learn from Sent E-mails or go to Vocabulary⇒Learn from Sent E-mails from the DragonBar. The Learn from Sent E-Mails Wizard appears, as shown in Figure 17-7.

Follow these steps to complete the process:

1. Click Next.

   Choose from the options presented by selecting the check boxes.

2. Click Next again.

   The e-mails are analyzed.

3. Click Next one more time.

   Any new words will be displayed for you to train (see the section “Learning from specific documents,” earlier in this chapter).

4. Click Finish.

Setting Options and Formatting

This section of the Accuracy Center is key. It contains several ways for you to customize NaturallySpeaking to make your assistant do things your way. Remember to revisit your Options settings periodically when you are using NaturallySpeaking. You may want to alter the settings you chose when you first started.

Opening the Options dialog box

It’s important to set personal options from Options on the Tools menu. From the Accuracy Center, access it by clicking in the Open the Options dialog box. This is where you set up preferences for the NaturallySpeaking assistant to work your way. See Chapter 3 for a full discussion.

Opening the Auto-Formatting dialog box

Auto-formatting is important so don’t skip it. Access it from the Open the Auto-Formatting Options dialog box in the Accuracy Center or go to Tools⇒Auto-Formatting Options.

If you get overzealous and regret some of the changes you made, click the Restore Defaults button shown in Figure 17-8.

To save time, consider setting these default options:

• Format Street Addresses, Phone Numbers, Prices, and Times Automatically: These check boxes allow typical formatting without your attention.
• Dates: You have the option to set a specific date format from a drop-down menu.
• Format Web and E-mail Addresses Automatically: To set this option, select the check box. If you have to do these a special way and can’t use auto-formatting, you may want to train them individually.
• Allow Pauses in Formatted Phrases: A nice feature, because you often pause to check numbers when speaking phone numbers. If you deselect this check mark, NaturallySpeaking may put spaces where you pause.

For more details about how auto-formatting relates to the new Smart Format rules, check out Chapter 6.

Adjusting Your Acoustics

The Accuracy Center provides three ways to help your NaturallySpeaking assistant improve your acoustics. They are as follows:

• By checking your microphone
• Launching Accuracy Tuning
• Reading text to train Dragon to your voice

I discuss these in the following sections.

Checking your microphone

Obviously, the microphone is an all-important part of your software. Make sure your NaturallySpeaking assistant doesn’t have a “hearing” problem. Does NaturallySpeaking make errors on lots of words and phrases, not just a specific few? Your problem could be with speaking unclearly, with your microphone position or quality, with your sound card quality, or with the microphone volume set by Dragon, as shown in Figure 17-9.

To rule out a hearing problem, rerun the microphone check from the Check Microphone link in the Accuracy Center. You can also access it from the Audio⇒Check Microphone menu option on the DragonBar. If Dragon thinks your audio is fine, and you still get errors on lots of words after running the microphone check, try the voice tips in Chapter 16. If all else fails, you can reset your audio by choosing Audio⇒Reset Audio Calibration. You may want to try checking the microphone and doing more training before going that route though because you lose all your audio training to date.

Launching Accuracy Tuning

Here’s where the correction and fine-tuning of your dictation really pay off. From the Launch Accuracy Tuning Now link in the Accuracy Center (or from Audio⇒Launch Accuracy Tuning), you’ll be presented with the Acoustic and Language Model Optimizer screen. Don’t be intimidated. Your NaturallySpeaking assistant does all the heavy lifting.

As shown in Figure 17-10, the Perform Acoustic Optimization and Perform Language Model Optimization check boxes are selected by default. Leave them selected, then do the following:

1. Click Go.

   You are given an estimated time for completion of this process. Don’t be shocked if the initial estimate says 450 hours! It quickly changes to a couple of minutes while it’s working. Perhaps your NaturallySpeaking assistant has a weird sense of humor.

   

2. After the process completes, click Done.

   You’ll be asked to save the newly optimized files.

3. Click Yes and you’re done.

See? Your NaturallySpeaking assistant does all the work. (Isn’t that why you pay it the big bucks?)

Reading text to train Dragon to your voice

If NaturallySpeaking seems to be making more mistakes than it used to, ask yourself if you have changed since you first trained Dragon. Has your voice, manner of speaking, or working environment changed?

For example, are you getting more experienced at dictation? Have you changed your office or changed something that makes or absorbs sound in your office? If so, try running the Training Wizard. (To access it, go to the DragonBar menu and choose Audio⇒Read Text to Improve Accuracy.) Training helps NaturallySpeaking get a more accurate picture of your voice and speech habits.

Running the Training Wizard after you’ve had some experience with NaturallySpeaking is a good idea. Often, you speak differently after a few days.

The plan for training is to read something to NaturallySpeaking so that it can figure out how you speak. Look around and find some reading material of interest to choose from.

A fundamental problem with training is that many people read differently than they dictate. Try to speak the way you would if you were the author and were thinking this stuff up for the first time.

Don’t say, “Cap” or any other dictation commands during training. Don’t say any punctuation, either. Don’t go back and reread something you think you read wrong. Just push forward and keep moving. It might be easier to print the story out, hold it, and read from there.

Finding or Training Commands

In version 13 of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Nuance gives you several ways to identify commands. The Learning Center makes it really easy to find them on the fly. (See Chapter 21.) Because the Learning Center is context-sensitive, you will always see the commands that are helpful for the application you are in.

If NaturallySpeaking isn’t obeying your commands, it may not be recognizing your pronunciation. You can improve its recognition for many commands exactly as you would for word or phrase training. See the steps in the preceding sections for instructions.

Make sure you capitalize the words of the command properly. Check the documentation that comes with NaturallySpeaking for proper capitalization. Most words in NaturallySpeaking command phrases are initial-capped except for articles, prepositions, and other short words.

You can’t, however, train “dictation commands” this way. These commands are the ones that control capitalization and spacing, like No Caps On. To train those commands, use the Vocabulary Editor. Scroll to the top (above the “a”) of the list of words in the Vocabulary Editor. Click a command and then click the Train button.

Before you try command training, make sure that you pause correctly before and after a command. If NaturallySpeaking gets the words right but types them instead of doing them, pausing is more likely to be your problem than pronunciation. Chapter 4 talks about solving this problem.

To access the Command Browser from the Accuracy Center, click the Open the Command Browser link. Or you can choose Tools⇒Command Browser.

You can also add a new command by choosing Tools⇒Add New Command. Here you can easily type in and train a new command. You need the Premium version to build text commands and the Professional version to build your own scripting commands (where you need to actually write code!).

When using the Command Browser, as shown in Figure 17-11, you have several options:

• Find specific applications: Click the Content drop-down menu to see if the particular application you’re using has specific commands in NaturallySpeaking. Then you can peruse them to see what you need.
• Train commands: By clicking a particular command, you can use the Train icon on the left side to train that command to understand your pronunciation.
• Look at scripts: By choosing the Script icon on the left side, you switch from Browse mode to Script mode. Here you can directly create, delete, edit, or copy commands.

  Unless you know what you’re doing, stay in Browse mode.

Getting More Information

This section of the Accuracy Center is where you find information about your vocabulary and a link to the Nuance website, shown in Figure 17-12.

When you click the How to Manage and Personalize Your Vocabularies link, you are taken to an explanation of the types of vocabularies available. Recall that when you installed your NaturallySpeaking software, you were asked several questions about your accent and what region of the world you live in. This Help section gives you more information about those vocabulary choices.

The Nuance website is chock-full of information, training, help, and tech support. Chapter 21 covers this extensively.