Inline Dictation commands
I’ve heard from a number of sources that there isn’t any good documentation about the ‘inline’ dictation commands. These commands can be uttered in the middle of a dictation stream (in other words, you don’t have to stop speaking to use these commands), and are used to guide the Speech Recognition Engine to produce the desired results.
| Command | Description |
| tab | Inserts a <tab> character. |
| new-line | Inserts a new line character and forces the next word to be capitalized. |
| new-paragraph | Inserts two new line characters and forces the next word to be capitalized. |
| caps <word> | Capitalizes the first letter of <word>. |
| no caps <word> | Lowercases <word>. |
| all caps <word> | Uppercases <word>. |
| no space | Does not insert a space before the next word. |
| literal <argument> | Does not perform any inverse text normalization on <argument>. |
| numeral <argument> | Forces <argument> into numeric form, if possible. |
Simple Examples
Tab, new-line, new-paragraph, caps, no caps, and all caps are pretty straightforward:
| User Input | Recognition Result |
| king tab county | king<tab>county |
| this is a test new-line this is another test | This is a test This is another test |
| this is a test new-paragraph this is another test | This is a test This is another test |
| no caps C I A | cia |
| C I A | CIA |
| I have caps in my closet | I have In my closet |
| I have all caps nothing | I have NOTHING |
| I have no space available | I haveavailable |
Examples using <literal>
In order to understand what <literal> does, you need to know what Inverse Text Normalization does. Inverse Text Normalization is the process of converting spoken forms into a preferred textual representation. Some examples are:
| User Input | Recognition Result |
| doctor smith | Dr. Smith |
| period | . |
| united states of america | United States of America |
| three hundred and five | 305 |
The <literal> command prevents that conversion from occurring, and forces the text to be input exactly as spoken.
Examples using <numeral>
The best way to describe the <numeral> command is to give some examples:
| User Input | Recognition Result |
| numeral two | 2 |
| two | two |
| numeral twelve | 12 |
| twelve | 12 |
| numeral four eight seven six two three | 487623 |
| four eight seven six two three | four eight seven six two three |
| numeral one and a half million | 1,500,000 |
| numeral one point five million | 1.5 million |
| numeral one point four five | 1.45 |
If the phrase cannot be interpreted as a number, then the numeral command does nothing:
| User Input | recognition result |
| numeral I want to go to the store | I want to go to the store |
Note that this phrase has a possible number (to –> two –> 2), but the intervening words deactivate the command.