Dictation Tips and Tricks

[twerppoet]

A thread for those of us who want to help each other get the most they can out of Dictation on the iPad.

Or if you're just curious, and and want to play with the features.

More and more often I find myself combining the dictation and keyboard for inputting my text. I don't know if it is faster, but it is sometimes easier; once you get past a not all that steep learning curve.

I just spend about an hour tracking down as many symbol commands as I could figure out, and added a few comments about what I found along the way. Hope it's useful to someone.


Dictation symbols

Words contained in () are not spoken. If all you see are words in the brackets, then I couldn't figure out a command.

• . period (or) full stop
• , comma
• : colon
• ; semicolon
• ! exclamation mark (or) exclamation point
• ? question mark
• - hyphen
• ' apostrophe
• 's apostrophe ess
• ` back quote (or) backtick
• ^ caret
• ' open single (quotation mark)
• ' close single (only seems works after "open single")
• " open quote
• " close quote
• « open euro quotes
• » close euro quotes
• ( open parenthesis
• ) close parenthesis
• [ open bracket
• ] close bracket
• { open curly bracket (or) open brace
• } close curly bracket (or close brace
• … ellipsis
• _ underscore
• – dash
• – double dash
• — em dash
• – en dash
• | vertical bar
• § section sign
• & ampersand
• ~ Tilda
• + plus sign
• - minus sign
• x multiplication sign
• ÷ division sign
• > greater than sign (or) close angle bracket (or) right angle bracket
• < less than sign (or) open angle bracket (or) left angle bracket
• % percent sign
• ‰ per mill sign
• ° degree sign
• \ back slash
• / forward slash
• # hash tag (or) pound sign (or) sharp sign
• * asterisk (or) star
• $ dollar sign
• ¢ cent sign
• £ (British pound)
• ¥ yen sign
• € euro sign
• ₩ (won)
• @ at sign
• © copyright sign
• ™ trademark sign
• ® registered sign

You can dictate basic Emoji. Using the full phrase usually works better than the short form.

• :-) smiley (or) smiley face
• ;-) winky (or) winky face
• :-( frowny (or) frown face

Interestingly you can say equations like 4×5 = 9, and it works. Many other symbols will appear in context.

Examples:
25°C = twenty five degrees Celsius
$13.95 = thirteen dollars and ninety-five cents.
3" x 4' = three inches by four feet

Other symbols need to be entered alone, or context will override. You can also override two word symbols by pausing for more than a second between the words when dictating.

Examples:
It was a mad dash to the grocery store.
Andromeda is my favorite star.
I put a question (pause) mark at the end of my set? (no pause)
There is a plus (pause)sign at the end of the Google + (no pause) name

I'm sure there are more, but I don't know the names of all the symbols on the keyboard; and I probably missed a few others. It wasn't exactly a methodical search.

Edited 28 Sep 2012 to include more symbols and emoji.


Dragon Dictation Commands that Work in iOS 6 Dictation

• New Paragraph = Start a new paragraph.
• New Line = Start a new line.
• Numeral = forces the next spoken number to be a number character. (1 vs one)
• Lowercase = when dictating letter by letter, controls the case. Works erratically.
• Uppercase = when dictating letter by letter, controls the case Works erratically.
• Caps On = Capitalizes the first letter of all major words: The First Letter of All Major Words (Like for book titles.)
• Caps Off = turns it off
• Cap = Capitalizes the next word: Word
• All Caps = Next world is all caps: WORD
• All Caps On = all letters are capitalized: ALL LETTERS ARE CAPITALIZED
• All Caps Off
• No Caps
• No Caps On
• No Caps Off
• No Space On = prevents all spaces: preventsallspaces
• No Space Off = turns it off
• No Space = used to prevent a space between words. Gasstation versus gas station
• Tab Key = inserts a tab

Edit: Added Commands 29 Sep 2012
Edit: Added paragraph and line command contributions from posts. 13 Oct 2012
Edit: Added Numeral command. Discovered by reading an AppAdvice article by Dom Espocito

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[haggisgirl]

Thanks!

[seneca18]

Awesome, great info!

[6mildollarman]

This is excellent! I've never really used the dictation feature on my iPad, but now I'm gonna try it out more.

[Tassiecelt]

"new paragraph" also works

[twerppoet]

"new paragraph" also works

As does "new line". Thanks.

[twerppoet]

Just discovered a few more dictation tricks. You can do a few emoji.

:-) = smiley face
:-( = frown face or frowny face
;-) = wink face or winky face

Those were the only ones I could figure out. See if you can find more.


Edit: Added emoji to first post.

[twerppoet]

Here are some I already tried, so you don't duplicate. I got a little desperate for ideas the second half.

Mean face
Sad face
Sour face
Angry face
Mad face
Sarcastic face
Green face
Embarrassed face
Happy face
Surprised face
Wow face
Whoops face
Dog face
Ugly face
Upset face
Nasty face
Nice face
Romney face
Obama face
Static face
Laughing face
Laugh face
OMG face
Weird face
Poop face

[scifan57]

Great post twerppoet.:-) :-) :-)

[iJamesH]

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