13.0

Exercise 7: Dictate “access code: 75Zq/7”, then practice with character sequences of your choice. (Pause briefly

after the colon, then say “spell 7 5 cap zee cue slash 7”. Try to not pause at all during the sequence; if you

paused, just resume by saying “spell” immediately followed by the rest of your sequence.)

Key points about dictating numbers and special text

 Dragon can format dates, times, prices, street addresses, phone numbers, Web addresses, units of

measure, and other special text automatically. The Auto-Formatting options dialog (from the Tools

menu) lets you turn these built-in rules off or on as desired. Also, the Word Properties dialog lets you

adjust spacing, capitalization, abbreviations (such as Gen. for General) and other alternate written forms

(such as “honour” and other spellings used in Canada). In version 12, Dragon reaches out to you through

its Smart Format Rules box when it detects that you made a change that might warrant adjusting one of

its format-related settings.

 The restricted recognition modes can make dictating special text more efficient. They are accessible by

voice commands (“Numbers Mode on”, “switch to Normal Mode”) and through the DragonBar’s Modes

menu.

 Dictation Mode can be helpful if you want to dictate as quickly as possible.

 If you will be dictating only numbers and punctuation, consider turning Numbers Mode on.

 If dictating a long sequence of characters (letters, digits, punctuation, symbols), consider Spell Mode. The

Spell command is good for short sequences which you can say all at once, without pausing, such as

“spell space T W O”.

 When spelling out, you can use alternate pronunciations for the letters (such as alpha, bravo, etc.) and

insert a capital letter by saying cap just before the letter. You can also say space or spacebar. (In Spell

Mode, Dragon doesn’t handle spacing as it usually does.)