10.0

Dictating Special Text: Numbers, Dates, Addresses, Units…

As you saw in your first dictation, Dragon NaturallySpeaking automatically inserts spaces between words. It also

follows spacing and capitalization rules: for example, it inserts a space after close quote but none after open

quote, and it capitalizes at the beginning of sentences and paragraphs.

In this lesson, you learn about contextual automatic formatting that allows you to naturally dictate prices,

times, dates, abbreviations, contractions, units of measure, street addresses, e-mail addresses, URLs, ISO

currency codes and other special text. You also learn about Spell mode and other recognition modes.

Special Text in Normal Dictation

On the Formatting dialog (available from the Tools menu), you can turn Dragon’s rules of automatic formatting

off and on, as desired.

For example, you can choose to have

Dragon systematically transcribe

numbers greater than two as numerals.

(By default, Dragon follows the

typographical rule that small integers

should be written as words unless they

appear in special contexts such as a unit

of measure or an address.)

You can also choose to have Dragon

automatically expand contractions such

as “won’t” and “didn’t”.

See the Help for more details.

TIP You can also affect what Dragon

“types” via the Vocabulary Editor’s

Word Properties dialog box.

Dragon can apply custom-defined

contextual formatting: in the Word

Properties dialog box, you can choose

one or even two alternate written

forms — for instance, if you prefer the

word “figure” to be written as “Fig.”

when before numbers (as in “Fig. 3”),

or if you prefer the dictation command

“new line” to trigger capitalization in

addition to a blank line. Please see the

lesson on Vocabulary customization

Exercise 1: Dictate some phone numbers, with and without area code; no need to say "hyphen".

Please call 607-585-3926 instead of 587-1239. Toll free directory: 1-800-555-1212