Dictation deletion commands

Continuing on my theme of diving deeper into dictation commands, today I’ll tell you all about the commands you can use to delete text from your documents:

Here’s a recap of the dictation commands used to delete text:

• “Delete [word or phrase in the document]”
• “Delete the word [word in the document]”
• “Delete [next/previous] [word/sentence/paragraph]”
• “Delete [next/previous] [number] [letter(s)/word(s)/sentence(s)/paragraph(s)]”
• “Delete document”
• “Delete that”

Deleting words and phrases in the document by referring to the words and phrases directly

Let’s start with “Delete [word or phrase in the document] ”. Using this command, you can delete any word or phrase in the document you’re editing. Examples of using that command while I’m dictating this blog posting might be: “Delete Let’s start with”.

A variation of that command, “Delete the word [word in the document] ” allows me to say things like “Delete the word that”, which would find the word “that” in the document and delete it.

Deleting words and phrases in the document by units, like letter, word, sentence, paragraph, and document

You can also delete the next or previous word, sentence, or paragraph by using the “Delete [next/previous] [word/sentence/paragraph] ” command. For example, to delete this entire paragraph, I could simply say “Delete previous paragraph” while I’m at the end of the paragraph.

Similarly, you can delete multiple “units” by simply inserting a number into the command: “Delete [next/previous] [number] [letter(s)/word(s)/sentence(s)/paragraph(s)] ”. For example, while in this paragraph, I could delete this paragraph, and the previous, by saying “Delete previous 2 paragraphs”.

I can also delete the entire document by saying: “Delete document”.

Referring to the previous utterance using “that”

If I just finished an utterance (an utterance is a single phrase dictated with silence around it), I could say “Delete that”, and that utterance would be deleted. If I just finished editing the phrase with the keyboard, we try and delete the most likely thing you meant when you say “Delete that”. Typically that will be the same as saying “Delete previous 1 word”.