Skip to main content

Hold Your Breath with Windows Speech Recognition Inline Dictation Commands

Eric Brown of the Microsoft Speech Development Team recently wrote a simple but highly enlightening article about an oft-misunderstood feature of WSR dictation: Inline Dictation Commands. In the article, he explains how nine special commands “can be uttered in the middle of a dictation stream,” unlike most other commands which require the speaker to pause before and after saying them. (Yeah… I realize that the title of my post utilizes an awful play on words, but at least now you hopefully get the point! :-))

The nine special commands presented in his article are as follows: tab, new line, new paragraph, caps, no caps, all caps, no space, literal, and numeral. Regardless of whether or not you are a newbie or power user of Windows Speech Recognition, knowing how to use these commands in your dictation repertoire will surely help you out, so you would be well advised to read Eric's article.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Using the On-Screen Keyboard as an Alternative to Typing with a Physical Keyboard

As an individual with a physical disability who touts speech recognition so much, I occasionally get asked how I ever use the computer without having speech recognition available (since I cannot move my arms well enough to operate a standard physical keyboard)? This is a good question, since speech recognition is not one of the most portable tools around. For example, I've never come across a public computer at a library or hotel that was set up with a good microphone and sound card combo, which are necessities for using speech recognition. So, when the necessary hardware is unavailable, that means I have to look for software to simulate it--in this case, the On-Screen Keyboard . The On-Screen Keyboard is nothing new to Windows; it's been one of the standard accessibility tools for several versions now, not just Vista. It's pretty simple, really, but is extremely useful for users like me who cannot utilize a traditional physical keyboard. Basically, the On-Screen Keyboard a...

"Start Typing" with Windows Speech Recognition

As a software developer with a physical disability that makes using a keyboard practically impossible for me, one of the most important capabilities of speech recognition that I always look for is keyboard emulation.  And by keyboard emulation, I’m not talking about entering a bunch of common words and phrases like I’m doing while writing this article.  This is called dictation.  Rather, I’m referring strictly to the ability to key short (or not-so-short) sequences of characters and/or key combinations like myVariableName or myFile.doc .  Words like these aren’t easily understood by the built-in speech recognition dictation engine because they are not in any dictionaries I know of (nor should they be), so another speech recognition mechanism is needed.  This is called typing. Vista’s speech recognition tutorial and the what can I say Windows help documents suggest one good way to type single keyboard keys— Press X .  For example, you can say Press a to t...

Shoot Ghosts with Windows Speech Recognition

Sorry about the lengthy blogging hiatus. I've been extremely busy at work and just have not found the time to spend on fun things like my blog. I know that's a lame excuse, so I'll give you another one. In what little free time I've managed to find, I've actually been playing a game. :-) And, guess what, I've been using Windows Speech Recognition to help me win. What game have I been playing, you ask? Well, my current game of choice happens to be Desktop Tower Defense , a relatively simple but strategically complex game. In fact, I would have never known about it without reading Text Services Framework guru Eric Brown's blog . Thanks, Eric! Now, I'm addicted, too. The object of this free Flash-based game is pretty simple. Shoot all the little ghosts before they escape the maze of towers that you create. It sounds simple enough, but it can get extremely difficult as the game progresses. In fact, a lot of the challenge involves managing and upg...