Chapter 4

Simply Dictating

In This Chapter

Dictating text and commands

Controlling the microphone

Reviewing tips for dictation

Punctuating and capitalizing

Entering spaces and tabs

Entering different numbers and dates

Making quick corrections

Tackling common dictation problems

It seems to me that dictating should be a far easier way to communicate than by tapping your fingers across a keyboard. And the basics of dictating are, in fact, pretty easy. You just need to know a few tricks that I tell you about in this chapter.

The “basics” of NaturallySpeaking are its keyboard-like capabilities to turn voice into text. NaturallySpeaking can do lots of other things (edit, format, make tables, launch programs, and more) too, but those tasks are covered in later chapters. The keyboard-like features are the ones you find in all versions of NaturallySpeaking.

This basic keyboard capability works not only in NaturallySpeaking DragonPad but also in any (well, nearly any) Windows application. See Part III for using NaturallySpeaking with Internet applications.

Chapter 5 goes into detail about correcting errors, moving your cursor around verbally, and other fine points of editing using NaturallySpeaking. Chapter 5 also discusses some of the more advanced editing features NaturallySpeaking offers in certain applications. For now, I focus on basic dictation in NaturallySpeaking.

Dictating 101: How to Dictate

After you have installed NaturallySpeaking on a computer with all the necessary system requirements (see Chapter 2), you’re on the road to a beautiful friendship with your assistant. Open the program into which you’d like to dictate and take the following steps:

1. Launch NaturallySpeaking. Choose Start⇒Programs⇒Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

   You can use Dragon NaturallySpeaking with a large number of applications. If you intend to use NaturallySpeaking with another application, launch that application at this point, too.

2. Put on your headset, and make sure the microphone is positioned as it was during initial training.

   The microphone should be positioned about a half-inch away from one corner of your mouth, off to the side. It should never be directly in front of your mouth.

3. Turn the microphone on.

   The microphone icon on the DragonBar needs to be green in order for you to dictate. If the icon is red, click it or press the + key on your keyboard’s numeric keypad to turn it green, as shown in Figure 4-1.

   

   The microphone icon in the toolbar of the NaturallySpeaking DragonBar works exactly the same way as the icon in the system tray. Make sure one of these is open and ready for you to dictate.

4. Click where you want the text to go if the cursor isn’t already there.

   Or select (highlight) the text that you want to replace with dictated text.

5. Speak carefully, just as you did when you read the text aloud to NaturallySpeaking during the initial setup. Don’t rush, and don’t speak the words with … spaces … between … them.

   As you speak, NaturallySpeaking shows you what it thinks you said.

6. Speak your punctuation, such as “Period” or “Comma,” as you go, and if you want a word capitalized, say the word “Cap” beforehand.

   However, you don’t need to say “Cap” if it is the first word of the sentence.

   See the later section, “Punctuating and Capitalizing,” for details.

If NaturallySpeaking makes errors (remember, it’s only 99+ percent accurate), correct them rather than edit them. For basic instructions, see “Making Quick Corrections,” later in this chapter. See Chapter 5 for additional details on correcting and for instructions for editing by voice.

Figure 4-2 is an example of how dictation works in NaturallySpeaking. These paragraphs show the basic keyboard-style input I discuss in this chapter.

Speak continuously. Don’t pause between your words (until you come to the end of a phrase)! Dragon NaturallySpeaking is designed to recognize continuous speech. If you deliberately put pauses between your words, Dragon NaturallySpeaking will make more errors, not fewer. (Pausing between phrases is okay, however.)

Use your keyboard and your mouse just as you would normally — to type, make menu selections, or use command keys (like Ctrl+Z). Or you can use Dragon NaturallySpeaking to perform keyboard and menu commands. See Chapter 15 for details.

Distinguishing between Text and Commands

NaturallySpeaking lets you mix dictation (words that are converted into text) and commands (instructions to the computer). You don’t have to press or click anything to tell NaturallySpeaking, “Here comes a command; don’t write this.” You just say the command.

Sometimes, however, you may not get what you expect. For instance, “Cap” is a command to capitalize the upcoming word. You may, however, dictate a sentence like, “We want to cap expenditures for this year” and see it come out like this: “We want to Expenditures for this year.”

Use pauses to control the interpretation. Most commands involve two or more words. NaturallySpeaking must hear them together, as a phrase, to interpret them as a command. To make sure NaturallySpeaking interprets a phrase as text instead of a command, pause between two or more of the words.

To have NaturallySpeaking interpret “cap” as text, for instance, pause between “cap” and the word it operates on, like “expenditure.” For a two- or three-word phrase that sounds like a command (like “Caps On”), pause between the words to break up the phrase (“They put their caps … on their heads.”) You also need to pause before commands that affect what you just said, as “Scratch That” does, undoing your preceding action. If you don’t pause, NaturallySpeaking will lump “scratch” with the preceding word and consider it all as text. Fortunately, such a pause is natural.

Most people aren’t that careful. They speak the phrase and then say, “Oh, rats” (silently, to themselves, or else NaturallySpeaking will dutifully type that out). Instead of “Oh, rats,” when you see the error, say, “Scratch That” to remove the blooper. Then repeat the phrase with the pauses adjusted. Don’t worry; this isn’t as complicated as it sounds. It becomes quite natural.

You can adjust the amount of time that NaturallySpeaking considers is a sufficient pause. (See Chapter 3.)

Pausing doesn’t help with punctuation and numbers that you want spelled out. For instance, you can’t dictate, “He typed a comma and continued.” You get the comma symbol, not the word. For those problems, use the Vocabulary Editor (described in Chapter 17) to add the written word comma with a new spoken form (for example, “word comma”). Then you can say, “He typed a word comma and continued.”

Although using pauses is the most reliable way to distinguish between text and command, NaturallySpeaking offers an alternative solution. This alternative doesn’t work for so-called “dictation commands” that have to do with capitalization, tabs, and line or paragraph breaks, but it does work for many other commands, such as formatting commands. To force your utterance to be taken as text, hold down the Shift key while you speak. To force it to be taken as a command, hold down the Ctrl key.

Controlling Your (Cough! Sneeze!) Microphone

Some people switch the microphone off and on to avoid inserting the garbage text that comes from coughing, sneezing, or answering the phone. Dragon NaturallySpeaking gives you several ways to control the microphone:

• Press the + key on the numeric keypad to switch the microphone between “on” and “off.” I find this switch to be the most convenient one.
• Click the microphone icon that appears either on the DragonBar or in the system tray of your Windows taskbar.
• Say, “Go to Sleep” or “Stop Listening” to disable the microphone. The microphone icon turns blue and a moon symbol appears next to the microphone icon. To wake up the microphone again, say, “Wake Up” or “Listen To Me.” (Or click the sleeping microphone icon, or press the + key on the numeric keypad twice.) This sleeping and waking stuff is not the same as “off” and “on.” What’s the difference? When the microphone is asleep, it’s still listening for the command, “Wake Up.” If you turn the microphone off, it isn’t listening at all.

There is no “Microphone On” command that corresponds to the “Microphone Off” command. You have to say “Wake Up” or “Listen To Me.” If the microphone is off, you must manually turn it on because it is not listening for anything.

You can change the microphone hotkey (normally the + key on the numeric keypad) by choosing Tools⇒Options and clicking the Hot Keys tab in the Options dialog box that appears. Then click the Microphone On/Off button in the dialog box; a tiny Set Hot Key dialog box appears. Now press the key or key combination you would prefer for the hotkey, and then click OK.

Tips for Talking

Dictating text, especially if you’re used to typing on a keyboard, can seem a little clumsy at first. You need to do things a bit differently than when you type. Following are eight tips to make your dictating easier:

• Try not to watch the screen as you talk. The two activities are somehow not very compatible. I find I lose my train of thought if I look at what’s being typed. Instead, look out the window or gaze off into the distance to compose and speak. Nuance removed the Results Box because people found it distracting.
• Dictate in phrases. You don’t have to dictate the entire sentence, with all its punctuation, all at once (although using longer phrases improves accuracy). For instance, as I dictated the preceding sentence, I paused after “the entire sentence” and paced a while in thought. I also paused before and after the commas.
• Punctuate and capitalize as you speak. Although you can certainly go back and punctuate and capitalize text after you dictate, punctuating as you speak is often easier, after you become used to it.
• Proofread what you have dictated. Dragon NaturallySpeaking will make some mistakes, particularly when you first get started. Sometimes those mistakes are both potentially embarrassing and so plausible-sounding that they are hard to detect! NaturallySpeaking provides two tools that address this problem:
  • Playback: Directly accessible from the DragonBar Audio menu, this feature plays back a recording of your voice (not available in the Home edition).
  • Read That: This feature actually synthesizes a voice from your text.

  See Chapter 7 for more information on these proofreading features.

• Avoid the temptation to use unusual or classic texts, such as the Gettysburg Address, when trying out NaturallySpeaking. Instead, use normal, day-to-day language. See Chapter 25 of this book if you want to play around with NaturallySpeaking. If you really intend to dictate poetry or something other than contemporary English regularly, use multiple users (see Chapter 19). Out of the box, NaturallySpeaking is designed for conventional and contemporary English; using it otherwise can cause errors.
• Expect dictating to be a bit awkward at first. If, like me, you are used to typing, you may find that composing your thoughts verbally is disconcerting at first.
• Compromise between using your voice and the keyboard if you can. Keep your hands on the mouse and keyboard for cursor and menu control, and then use Dragon NaturallySpeaking as a fast way to type and format text. For example, you might highlight some text with your mouse and then say, “Cap That” or move your cursor somewhere and dictate.
• To get used to NaturallySpeaking gradually, try typing normally using the keyboard; then, every so often, dictate a bit of text that you find awkward to type.

If you’re stumped about what command to say, you can always call on your Learning Center with, “What can I say?” and you’ll see the appropriate commands.

Punctuating and Capitalizing

Dictating isn’t quite like speaking. Unlike human listeners, NaturallySpeaking can’t interpret the inflections and pauses in your voice as punctuation. When you dictate, you have to make an effort to help NaturallySpeaking out, although NaturallySpeaking does do some punctuating and capitalizing automatically. Here’s how to work with NaturallySpeaking to get your words correctly capitalized and your apostrophizing properly punctuated.

Punctuating your remarks

Speaking punctuation marks as you dictate is annoying but necessary if you want to avoid the tedious process of going back and inserting punctuation. Tables 4-1, 4-2, and 4-3 show you what words to say to insert punctuation marks as you speak.

Table 4-1 Single Punctuation Marks

Table 4-2 Paired Punctuation Marks

Table 4-3 Math and Computer Symbols

Here are some tips for dictating punctuation:

• NaturallySpeaking puts no space before an apostrophe, so you can easily make a noun possessive (such as in “Tom’s bicycle”) by speaking the word (“Tom”) and then saying, “Apostrophe Ess.” Dragon NaturallySpeaking may supply an apostrophe automatically if, from the context, it thinks you are describing a possessive noun or contraction, but it can’t always do that accurately. It’s more reliable, if more awkward, to speak the word and then add, “Apostrophe Ess.”
• NaturallySpeaking uses a double dash character when you say the word “Dash.” If you would rather use a different character, you can paste that character into your vocabulary list using Dragon’s Vocabulary Editor (described in Chapter 17), and create your own spoken command for that character, such as, “Em Dash.”
• You can hyphenate any multi-word utterance (such as the phrase, “all-encompassing”) by saying, “Hyphenate That” immediately after speaking the phrase.
• If you meant to use a punctuation word as text, such as the word period, and NaturallySpeaking used that word as punctuation instead, say, “Correct That” and choose the interpretation you prefer. See “Making Quick Corrections” later in this chapter for instructions.

Discovering Natural Punctuation

If you’d like to wade slowly into the process of speaking punctuation, you’ll be happy to know that NaturallySpeaking provides a function called Natural Punctuation, which automatically adds periods and commas where Dragon thinks they should go. If you start a new line or a new paragraph or come to what NaturallySpeaking thinks is the end of a sentence based on your pause, it will add a period. Choose DragonBar⇒Tools⇒Auto-Formatting Options and select the check box that says Automatically Add Commas and Periods to turn that feature on.

This doesn’t prevent you from saying “period” or “comma,” but if you forget or are new to the process, you have a backup. Remember that it won’t add any punctuation other than periods and commas. You still need to say them. (See preceding tables for punctuation you can use.)

Capitalizing on your text

NaturallySpeaking does some capitalization for you, as you dictate. For example, it generally capitalizes the first letter of a sentence. (Its cue to capitalize is that you have started a new paragraph or punctuated the end of a sentence.) It also capitalizes words that it thinks are proper nouns or that it has been taught to capitalize in its vocabulary training or editing. In general, as long as you don’t do any manual typing between finishing one sentence and starting the next, NaturallySpeaking automatically takes care of the initial capitalization.

When NaturallySpeaking doesn’t capitalize for you, you have several ways to capitalize words yourself. The two best and easiest ways to capitalize are either before you speak a word or phrase or immediately afterward.

You can also select any text with your mouse or by voice and then apply capitalization and other formatting. See Chapter 5 for more about that technique.

Here are the basics of capitalizing the initial letters of words:

• To capitalize the first letter of any word, before speaking it say, “Cap” followed immediately by your word. Don’t pause between “Cap” and whatever the word is, or Dragon NaturallySpeaking will type cap instead of doing it!
• After you say some words and NaturallySpeaking types them in your program window, say, “Cap That” or “All Cap That.” “Cap” means the initial letters are capitalized. “All Cap” means all the letters of a word are capitalized.
• If you are about to speak a series of words that must be capitalized, say, “Caps On.” Speak those words (pausing for as long as you like anywhere in this process), and then say, “Caps Off.” To capitalize all the letters in a series of words (LIKE THIS) use the phrases “All Caps On” and “All Caps Off” instead.

Table 4-4 lists all the various ways to capitalize.

Table 4-4 Capital Ideas

“Caps On” and “Cap That” don’t really mean, “Capitalize the first letter of every word.” A more accurate interpretation would be, “Capitalize the first letter of every important word.” NaturallySpeaking tends to omit initial capitals for prepositions, articles, and all those other little words whose correct names I (and probably you) forget. Even though NaturallySpeaking is probably being editorially correct according to the Chicago Manual of Style or other such authority, such selective capitalization may not be what you have in mind. If you want NaturallySpeaking to capitalize absolutely all the words, you have to say the command “Caps” before each word.

Taking Up Space

Understanding a letter or other document depends not only on the words but on the spaces between the words as well. Getting your document spaced out is relatively easy. NaturallySpeaking automatically does some word, sentence, and paragraph spacing. You can control that spacing, or add space of your own.

Controlling paragraph spacing

NaturallySpeaking has two commands that you can say to create the space that divides paragraphs: “New Paragraph” and “New Line.” What’s the difference?

• “New Paragraph” puts a blank line between paragraphs. It is like pressing the Enter key twice: It inserts two paragraph marks (invisible) into your text. It also makes sure that the first word of the next sentence is capitalized.
• “New Line” does not put a blank line between paragraphs. It is like pressing the Enter key once. The next line isn’t capitalized unless you ended the last line with a period, question mark, or exclamation point.

One quick way to set a word to always be capitalized is to select a word or symbol in the vocabulary, go to its properties, and make the change there.

Dragon’s way of doing the “New Paragraph” command might cause a problem for you if you are going to use any kind of paragraph formatting (such as bullets or, in Word, paragraph spacing). It’s better to use the “New Line” command instead. Otherwise, in many instances, you double the effect of the paragraph formatting: You get two bullets or twice the spacing you intended, for example.

When you are creating bullets and want the first word of each to be capped, remember to say, “Cap” after saying, “New line” each time if you are not using periods at the end of your bullets.

If you want to type the words new paragraph instead of creating a new paragraph, put a pause between the two words: “New” [pause] “paragraph.”

Controlling spaces and tabs

Dragon NaturallySpeaking does a pretty good job of automatic spacing. It usually deals with spaces around punctuation in the way that you want it to. Occasionally, however, you will want to add a few spaces or a Tab character in your text.

Automatic spaces

NaturallySpeaking automatically puts spaces between your words. It looks at your punctuation to figure out the rest of the spacing. If, for some reason, you don’t want spaces between your words, speak the command “No-Space On,” speak your words, and then say, “No-Space Off.” Or if you anticipate that NaturallySpeaking is about to precede your next word with a space that you don’t want, say, “No-Space” and then your next word, with no pauses between.

NaturallySpeaking does different amounts of spacing after other punctuation marks. It is done in a way that usually works. For instance, NaturallySpeaking puts one space after a comma, unless that comma is part of a number, such as 12,000 (whether spoken as “Twelve thousand” or “Twelve comma zero zero zero”). NaturallySpeaking also offers a so-called “numeric comma” that’s never followed by a space. You can find these choices by going to Tools⇒Auto-Formatting Options.

Adding spaces and tabs

The quickest way to add a space is to say the word “Spacebar.” For a tab character, say, “Tab Key.” Just as NaturallySpeaking does for “Comma” or “Period,” it accepts these words or phrases as a character that it should type.

Another way to do the same thing is to say, “Press Spacebar” or “Press Tab.” In fact, you can tell NaturallySpeaking to press any key on the keyboard by saying the word “Press” and then the name of the key. So, to press the spacebar, you can say, “Press Spacebar.” Or to press the F1 key, you say, “Press F1.”

When should you use “Press Spacebar” or “Press Tab”? If you sometimes write about the keyboard, you may end up training NaturallySpeaking to type out the word spacebar or tab when you speak it, instead of inserting a space character. Sometimes, you may need to use the word tab in other contexts. (For example, “Run me a tab.”) In that event, the “Press” command will be the more reliable way to get a space or tab character.

Entering Different Numbers and Dates

When people speak about numbers and dates, they use so many different forms that it’s remarkable that a software program can actually figure them out. Yet, NaturallySpeaking can do it. You can say, “Eight o’clock AM” and Dragon NaturallySpeaking types 8:00 AM. Or you can say, “Forty-five dollars” and NaturallySpeaking types $45.

Most of the time, NaturallySpeaking types numbers and dates just the way you want it to, without doing anything special. The most common correction that you’ll have to do is tell NaturallySpeaking to use numerals rather than words for digits zero through nine. To do so, say, “Numeral” before speaking the digit. Table 4-5 lists some of the ways you can say numbers and dates.

If a number, date, or time doesn’t come out in the form that you want, you may be able to choose the form you want by saying, “Correct That” and then choosing from the list in the Correct That dialog box. For instance, when speaking the words “Seven o’clock,” NaturallySpeaking initially typed seven o’clock. But, by saying, “Correct That” and choosing 7:00 from the pop-up window choices displayed as shown in Figure 4-3, NaturallySpeaking learned that I wanted the numerical form. See Chapter 5 for more about the “Correct That” command.

Table 4-5 Numbers and Dates

Making Quick Corrections

Although making corrections technically falls into the editing category, and editing is discussed in Chapter 5, you usually want to make a few corrections the instant you see an error. Errors fall into two categories:

• Errors that you make — which I call “bloopers”
• Errors that NaturallySpeaking makes in interpreting your speech

You deal with those errors in two different ways: scratching and correcting. Read on!

Scratching your bloopers

Making a verbal “blooper” is easy to do with speech input. You call across the office to someone or mutter something sarcastic, and NaturallySpeaking dutifully types it. If you make a mistake verbally, however, you can also undo it verbally. (On the other hand, if NaturallySpeaking, not you, makes the mistake, you should “correct” NaturallySpeaking, not undo the mistake. See the upcoming section for details.) The two verbal commands that are most useful for undoing your bloopers are these:

• “Scratch That”
• “Undo That”

The NaturallySpeaking command for undoing your bloopers is “Scratch That.” To use the command, you must not have edited anything with your mouse and keyboard since you last spoke. The command will undo up to ten consecutive utterances, up to the last break in your dictation (where you did some keyboard work).

Alternatively, you can say, “Undo That” (or “Undo Last Action”). That verbal command is the equivalent to the “Undo” command, so it works not only on dictated text, but also on anything that you could normally undo. For example, if you had just applied bullet-style formatting, you could undo that formatting.

Of course, nothing says that you have to use NaturallySpeaking to undo your bloopers. You can use your keyboard or mouse (press Ctrl+Z, for example, press the Backspace key, or select the text and press the Delete key) just as you would if you had typed the mistake.

If physically pressing the Backspace or Delete key isn’t an option for you, here are two verbal commands you can use for the same purpose:

• “Backspace” (or “Press Backspace”)
• “Delete” (or “Press Delete”)

You can backspace or delete several characters by saying, “Backspace 7” to backspace seven characters, for example, or “Delete 8 characters” to delete eight characters to the right of the typing cursor. The “Backspace” command can be more reliable. (Because the word delete is more commonly written out in text than the word backspace, NaturallySpeaking sometimes errs on the side of writing out delete rather than doing the “Delete” command.)

Resuming dictation with an earlier word

Tripping over your tongue is easy when dictating. Also, composing sentences on the fly isn’t easy, and sometimes you want to change your mind about the phrase you just used.

You can solve both problems (misspeaking and changing your mind) with the “Resume With <word>” command. For <word>, substitute the word you want NaturallySpeaking to back up to. That word must be within the last 100 characters you have dictated, and you must have dictated continuously (typed or edited nothing by hand) since that word.

For instance, following is dictation where someone makes an error in the first line, gives a correction using “Resume With,” and completes the phrase correctly:

• Speaking the original error: “I keep on getting my tang tungled up.”
• (Brief pause, as the user realizes the error)
• Backing up: “Resume With my.”
• Correcting from that point: “tongue tangled up”

The resulting text is Getting my tongue tangled up.

This command is particularly useful when you dictate into a portable recorder. See Chapter 11 for more about using commands when you dictate into a recorder.

Correcting a NaturallySpeaking error

If NaturallySpeaking has misinterpreted something that you said, you can fix that mistake and help train your NaturallySpeaking assistant. To accomplish this, you have to correct the error rather than just typing in the correct text, scratching the error, or undoing it. What’s the difference?

In Dragon terms, correcting something means to tell NaturallySpeaking what you actually said rather than merely editing the text in the document. When you correct an error, you not only fix the resulting text, but you also educate your NaturallySpeaking assistant to understand your individual speech habits. Correction is one of the main ways in which NaturallySpeaking gets better over time. Don’t shortchange your assistant by not correcting it.

I describe all the different ways of correcting NaturallySpeaking in Chapter 5, but here are two easily remembered ways using the command “Correct That”:

• If NaturallySpeaking just made the error, say, “Correct That” or “Spell That.” Either the Correction menu box or the Spelling Window appears. (You can also spell from the Corrections menu box.)
• If NaturallySpeaking made the error a while back, select the erroneous text and say, “Correct That” to get the Correction dialog box.

Another quick way to make the correction would be to say, “Correct <xyz>” (where <xyz> is the word that Dragon didn’t recognize).

This second way of correction works only in the NaturallySpeaking window and in what are called “Full Text Control” applications. In other applications, you select the text, and then you must speak replacement text. If the new text is also erroneous, say, “Correct That.” See Chapter 8 for more tips on using NaturallySpeaking with other applications.

When the Correction dialog box appears, it lists numbered alternatives. Verbally choose one of the alternatives by saying, “Choose <number>.” For instance, say, “Choose five.” This approach is my favorite. If none of the alternatives are correct, you may verbally spell out the replacement text.

Another way to handle it if none of the options are correct is to redictate what you meant to say. If you get that wrong, say “Spell That” and you can spell it out. When you use the Spelling Window, the word is added to the vocabulary for future use.

With regard to corrections, remember that editing with the keyboard helps improve Dragon but editing with voice improves it even more.

Tackling Common Dictation Problems

Following are some common problems users experience with dictation. You can fix many of them by using the Correction menu box, described earlier in this chapter, or by word or vocabulary training (see Part IV for the details of vocabulary and word training):

• Sound-alike words: When two words normally sound exactly alike, even human speakers make mistakes. The way that humans distinguish one word from the other is by the context. That’s how NaturallySpeaking works, too. If it didn’t work that way, you couldn’t say a sentence like “It was too far for two people to go to purchase two tickets” and have any hope that NaturallySpeaking would get it correct. Vocabulary training and using the Correction menu box will alleviate this problem to some degree.
• Commands as text: Sometimes, if you say, “Go To End of Line,” NaturallySpeaking will type those words instead of performing the command. One solution that may work is to pause very slightly before speaking each word. Another solution is word training, as described in Part IV. A quick fix is to hold down the Ctrl key while speaking a command, which forces NaturallySpeaking to interpret your utterance as a command.
• Text as commands: Sometimes you want to actually type something like “go to end of line,” but NaturallySpeaking instead interprets your utterance as a command. Avoid pausing before and after that phrase, if you can. A quick fix is to hold down the Shift key while dictating, which forces NaturallySpeaking to interpret speech as text.
• Extra words: If NaturallySpeaking gives you small, extra words in your text, it may be interpreting microphone noises as words. Make sure the microphone isn’t in front of your mouth, or else it will pick up tiny puffs of breath and interpret them as words. (Also, if applicable, make sure the microphone cover isn’t brushing against your beard or moustache, if you have one.) This is a good time to rerun the microphone check in the Audio section of the DragonBar. You may simply be in a new environment that is causing this with new background noises or you may have changed the volume before you started dictating.
• Acronyms and other non-words: Contemporary English uses a lot of acronyms, abbreviations, initials, and other unconventional words. You can add these terms to NaturallySpeaking by using the Vocabulary Editor, described in Chapter 17. You can also add them by speaking them and then correcting the NaturallySpeaking interpretation with the Spelling Window. The NaturallySpeaking vocabulary already includes many common abbreviations. If NaturallySpeaking thinks it hears initials, and those initials aren’t otherwise in its vocabulary, it capitalizes them and puts a period after each letter.
• E-mail addresses: If you use a particular e-mail or web address a lot, you can add it to your vocabulary like other “non-words,” as the preceding bullet describes. Otherwise, you can say an e-mail address, such as “[email protected],” much the way you would in conversation. To make sure everything is lowercase, say, “No Caps On,” then the e-mail address, and then “No Caps Off.” For the address itself ([email protected], for instance), say, “person at company dot com.” If you are getting spaces within the name in the e-mail address, you can also bring up the Spelling Window and add it there.
• Web addresses: Use the “No Caps On” and “No Caps Off” commands as suggested in the preceding bullet to prevent capitalization. Speak a web address in the form, “www dot <company> dot com.” For a full address (such as http://www.company.com) say, “http www dot <company> dot com,” saying nothing about the colon or slashes. NaturallySpeaking adds the colon and slashes and recognizes the terms com, gov, mil, net, org, and sys just as you would normally say them. If you prefer, you can verbally spell out the letters in those terms.