1.2

25 MacSpeech DictateChapter 5 — Dictation
Wake Up or Turn Microphone On. When MacSpeech
Dictate is asleep, the Status window will look like
Figure 5-5:
Figure 5-5
If you will be away from the computer for an extended period
of time, use the Microphone Off command instead. This
ensures MacSpeech Dictate can’t accidentally interpret
room noise or speech from a conversation as a Wake Up
command.
Dictating Special Kinds of Words
As you learned while training MacSpeech Dictate, it is
necessary to speak punctuation so it can accurately tell
where sentences begin and end, among other things. There
is an extensive list of things you can say. The following
tables provide a guide to the different things you can say that
produce text beyond just words on the page.
How does MacSpeech Dictate know the difference between
punctuation and a real word? Consider the following
sentences:
Wayne scored the winning goal in the third period
PERIOD (US Only)
The train came to a full stop FULL STOP (all
dialects)
MacSpeech Dictate does not use simply word recognition, but
rather an analysis known as continuous speech recognition.
The program analyzes complete phrases as you speak —
taking a close look at what is said both before and after the
current word or phrase. Only then does it decide what was
dictated.
Because of this, MacSpeech Dictate has many special terms
that produce a variety of effects or symbols. Let’s take a look
at them.
Capitalization
MacSpeech Dictate does some capitalization formatting
for you. It will automatically capitalize the first word in a
document, the first word in a sentence, and proper names that
are already in its vocabulary. Otherwise, it uses the following
capitalization commands:
Capitalization Commands
What You Say What Happens
Caps On
Turnsoncapitalizingtherstletterof
every word.
Caps Off
Turnsoffcapitalizingtherstletterof
every word.
Cap <word> Capitalizes the next word spoken.
All Caps <word> Types the next word spoken in CAPS.
All Caps On Makes every word CAPS.
All Caps Off Returns capitalization to normal.
No Caps <word> Makes the next word spoken lower case.
No Caps On
Makes the following text lowercase until
turned off.
No Caps Off Returns capitalization to normal.
Capitalize the Word[s]
“text” [through/to “text”]
Capitalizestheidentiedwordorphrase
spoken that is closest to the insertion
point.
Cap is singular, Other Caps are not
Note that there are several similar commands here, but
each has a different function. The command “Cap <word>”
capitalizes only the next word spoken. Please notice that
this command doesn’t have the letter “s” on the end. The
command Cap <letter> is the only capitalization command
that works in Spelling Mode.
The commands “Cap <word>” and “No Caps <word>” are
expiring commands. When the command is spoken, it will
cause the Caps/AllCaps/NoCaps indicator light to turn
orange (Figure 5-6) until the <word> part of the command is
completed.
Figure 5-6
Caps/AllCaps/NoCaps
The top indicator light in the Status Window lights up green
when the you have turned on one of these commands:
Caps On - Capitalizes the first letter of almost every word dic-
tated, until you say “Caps Of f”. For example, if you say, “This
is the title of the book” it will be dictated as “This Is The Title
of the Book”. The top indicator light in the Status Window will
turn green and show the text “Abc” (Figure 5-7).
Note: Not all words are capitalized, such as “the”, “of”, etc.