10.0

Correcting Transcription Errors in Your Dictated Text

Human beings sometimes can’t recognize words correctly—especially if the speaker and the listener come from

different regions, if the speaker is discussing an unfamiliar subject, or if the words are not well articulated. In

addition, when we hear a word for the first time, we may not know how to spell it. Some people’s first or last

names can be spelled different ways (like Gene/Jean, Hansen/Hanson). We often must verify how a person

spells his or her name.

This is also true for Dragon! The software uses contextual clues and statistical information to guess what to

transcribe, but sometimes cannot guess correctly. In particular, it may not recognize uncommon words on the

first try, and instead types something that was likely according to its statistics. It cannot recognize and

transcribe a word it has never seen.

Fortunately, in addition to optimizing acoustic factors, taking advantage of the vocabulary customization tools

and using proper correction techniques will significantly reduce the number of errors. Dragon’s Help contains

many details about the different ways to perform it—this workbook presents essential information for efficient

correction, and introduces the Spell dialog box.

Correcting via the Spell dialog box

Before using the following correction method for the

first time, open the Options dialog box, on the

Correction tab, choose the option: "Correct"

commands bring up Spell dialog box.

With this option set, you can correct

misrecognitions in two simple steps:

1) Say correct immediately followed by the

word(s) to be corrected. The Spell dialog box

opens.

2) In it, indicate what you actually wanted.

As you will see, there are many ways to quickly

indicate in the Spell dialog what should have

been recognized—including spelling out

characters, hence the name “Spell dialog.”

IMPORTANT <xyz> represents the relevant

segment on the screen (which could be one or more

words, and could include numbers or punctuation

marks). When you give the ‘correct <xyz>’ command,

be sure to say what appears on the screen, not what

you had intended.

Here is an example. Let’s say you have dictated "hotel colon the Madison", but the final word was misrecognized

as “medicine”. To correct Dragon’s error, you can say correct the medicine.