I’m starting to use voice dictation tools on my mobile phone and also my desktop to decrease the amount of typing and I’m doing basically just to make my workday a little easier. I’m actually dictating this post right now and I’m using the voice dictation commands to create all the various dictation elements, linebreaks, paragraph breaks, and any other formatting things that you need to do without typing.
I’m going to tell you about how I started using it and I’m going to make a recommendation and how I think you should start using it and I think if you try my little trick you’ll know immediately whether it’s something you think is going to be fun for you to play with or not.
I will say it’s really fantastic to just stop typing and start thinking and connecting your brain to your words to your messaging and taking the whole idea of a keyboard device out of the equation.
It just makes things simpler, and it also seems like with enough practice you could be communicating on the much clearer, much more focused level.
One funny thing it’s actually started to happen is that when I use it for text messages I find my texts really need to sound like a text is being typed otherwise it freaks out the people that I’m dictating to. And with email it requires it’s own specific tone, and as you’re dictating you have to talk in a way that sounds appropriate to a way that people with type in this particular medium. And that is all just very strange and difficult to learn how to do.
What I do think is though that as the world progresses we continue to speak fewer languages, and if people start to speak mostly with voice and we take out these layers of typing tools that we use to craft our thoughts (typewriter based qwerty keyboard), that maybe we will all start speaking this more singular more common language that’s based more on what we’re trying to express and less on trying to express something that’s appropriate to the medium that word using, like email, like text, like literature, like the news, etc.
It seems like everyone that’s communicating in whatever layer of our culture or our consciousness they are there always crafting a message for that tool that they’re using to communicate rather than just focusing on what they want to say. And perhaps if we are able to remove these tools that we use to communicate and get closer to just speaking mind to mind, or mind to computer to mind, that we will be able to start communicating more effectively.
So here’s the trick. What you you want to do is put your phone down on the table in front of you. Now open up an email that’s blank and put your phone back down the table in front of you don’t hold it in your hand. They’ll go ahead and use the voice commands that I’m writing below to Start to play around with dictation and formatting. If you like the way it’s working I suggest you continue to try do it when you’re texting people from your car, writing an email in a situation where you can’t use your hands, or just try using it at your desk see you can sit back and think about what you want to say rather than type what you want to say.
Here’s a link that explains how to activate voice dictation on your Mac. If you’re using the current IOS there’s a small icon at the bottom of your keyboard activates voice recognition. Presses button when you want to start dictating and your phone will turn your voice into text.
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT5449
This post was dictated entirely on my phone (I made some edits afterwards), this list I’m now cutting and pasting manually:
You can use these shortcuts with iOS and Mac, enjoy…
– “new line” is like pressing Return on your keyboard
– “new paragraph” creates a new paragraph
– “cap” capitalizes the next spoken word
– “caps on/off” capitalizes the spoken section of text
– “all caps” makes the next spoken word all caps
– “all caps on/off” makes the spoken section of text all caps
– “no caps” makes the next spoken word lower case
– “no caps on/off” makes the spoken section of text lower case
– “space bar” prevents a hyphen from appearing in a normally hyphenated word
– “no space” prevents a space between words
– “no space on/off” to prevent a section of text from having spaces between words
– “period” or “full stop” places a period at the end of a sentence
– “dot” places a period anywhere, including between words
– “point” places a point between numbers, not between words
– “ellipsis” or “dot dot dot” places an ellipsis in your writing
– “comma” places a comma
– “double comma” places a double comma (,,)
– “quote” or “quotation mark” places a quote mark (“)
– “quote … end quote” places quotation marks around the text spoken between
– “apostrophe” places an apostrophe (‘)
– “exclamation point” places an exclamation point (!)
– “inverted exclamation point” places an inverted exclamation point (¡)
– “question mark” places a question mark (?)
– “inverted question mark” places an inverted question mark (¿)
– “ampersand” places an ampersand sign (&)
– “asterisk” places an asterisk (*)
– “open parenthesis” opens a set of parenthesis “(“
– “close parenthesis” closes a set of parenthesis “)”
– “open bracket” opens a set of brackets “[“
– “close bracket” closes a set of brackets “]”
– “open brace” opens a set of braces “{“
– “close brace” closes a set of braces “}”
– “dash” places a dash (-) with spaces before and after
– “hyphen” places a hyphen between words without a space
– “em dash” places an em dash (–)
– “underscore” places an underscore (_)
– “percent sign” places a percent sign (%)
– “copyright sign” places a copyright symbol
– “registered sign” places a registered trademark symbol
– “section sign” places a section sign
– “dollar sign” places a dollar sign ($)
– “cent sign” place a cent sign (¢)
– “degree sign” places a degree symbol (º)
– “caret” places a caret (^)
– “at sign” places an at symbol (@)
– “pound sign” places a pound symbol (#)
– “greater than sign” places a greater than symbol (>)
– “less than sign” places a less than symbol (<)
– “forward slash” places a forward slash (/)
– “back slash” places a back slash ()
– “vertical bar” places a pipe (|)
– “smiley” or “smile face” places a “:-)”
– “frowny” or “frown face” places a “:-(“
– “winky” or “wink face” places a “;-)”
– “e g” places a “e.g.”
– “i e” places a “i.e.”