11.5

Formatting Text by Voice

Whether text was originally dictated or typed, Dragon NaturallySpeaking lets you use your voice to control font

(Arial, Courier…), font style (bold, underline…), font size, alignment (center, right-align…), color, and more.

Note: In order to preserve your train of thought, it’s a good idea to prioritize dictation over formatting: first

dictate your document (or at least finish dictating your paragraph, list, or idea), then revise your text if

needed, and only then apply formatting.

The "X that" Convention

Dragon has many commands to tell the computer to perform a certain action on a certain item. Many are

phrased as "X that", with X being a verb for the desired action: for instance, italicize that and delete that.

Remember, for commands to be recognized, you must pause before and after but not in the middle.

When Dragon hears an "X that" command, it decides what “that” is as follows:

1) If anything on the screen is highlighted (whether by voice or by hand), Dragon performs the action on

that selection. (It can be one or more characters or words.)

2) If nothing is highlighted, Dragon performs the action on whatever you dictated since you last paused—in

n other words, the contents of the Results box, the last utterance.

Note: In Dragon’s commands, you can say “the selection” instead of “that”.

Dragon's "X that" editing commands include:

Cap that – capitalizes the first letter of each word in the segment (e.g. Water Management)

ALL CAPS that – capitalizes all the letters of each word in the segment (e.g. EXTREMELY IMPORTANT)

no caps that – puts in lowercase all the letters of each word in the segment (e.g. american express)

delete that (Version 11 also lets you use “delete <xyz>” as seen in the lesson on direct editing)

scratch that

TIP To delete your last utterances, you can repeat scratch that or specify a number of times (for

instance, scratch that 3 times) but the command “resume with…” can be most efficient.

bold that, italicize that, underline that (Version 11 also lets you say “<verb> <xyz>”)

restore that – removes all bold/italics/underline formatting from the segment

left-align that, right-align that, center that, justify that

copy that and cut that (you can also use “<verb> <xyz>”)

paste that

hyphenate that – puts hyphens in the spaces within the segment

compound that – removes spaces between words in the segment

bullet/unbullet that (make sure you are familiar with how your particular application handles bullets)

quote that - puts quotation marks around the selection or last utterance

bracket that (in UK English, this inserts rounded characters, not square brackets)