10.0

Editing Text by Voice

Dragon NaturallySpeaking lets you use your voice to move around within a document and edit the contents—

whether or not that document was originally created by voice. As you learned, the software transcribes your

dictation wherever the insertion point is (usually shown as a thin blinking vertical bar some call cursor.)

Here are some of the commands to select text and move the insertion point. Mouse and keyboard can still be

used, of course. Don’t try to do everything by voice unless you have to; at first, focus on dictation accuracy —

speaking clearly, adapting the vocabulary, performing corrections…

Navigation and Selection Commands

TIP

Navigation commands use the words go and move interchangeably, and a space counts as one character.

• Some commands move the insertion point regardless of its starting location:

move to top, or go to start of document –- moves to the beginning of the document

move to bottom –- moves to the end of the document

• Other commands move the insertion point relative to its present location:

move to end of line (the current line, the one containing the insertion point)

move up(down) 1-20 line(s) or paragraph(s) –- e.g. move up 3 lines

move left(back) 1-20 word(s) or character(s) –- e.g. move left 7 words

move right(forward) 1-20 word(s) or character(s) –- e.g. move forward 3 characters

• The insert commands position the insertion point just before or just after a specific word or

punctuation mark:

insert before your office –- moves the insertion point to just before the phrase "your office"

insert after Joe comma -– moves to just after the comma following the word “Joe”

The select commands let you “highlight” editable text visible on the screen. Below are just some of them.

• You can say select followed by what you wish to highlight (include punctuation as needed):

select next 2 words select let me know select comma obviously comma

TIP For words (or phrases) that appear several times in your document, you can use the command select

again to move the highlighting until the desired instance is selected. Also, for commands that quote from the

screen, it can be useful to name more than just one word, to avoid possible ambiguity: e.g. to correct "a" in

"received a request," you may want to say “correct received a” or "correct a request."

• Very useful for longer phrases: you can specify a range by naming its beginning and end:

select do let THROUGH convenience – "do let me know please at your earliest convenience"

• You can select one or more lines or paragraphs at a time: select line, select previous 3 paragraphs…

• You can select around the insertion point: select previous 5 words, select next character…