© Shutterstock It only takes a few clicks to enable Word's speech-to-text mode. Shutterstock

• Dragon Speak To Type
• Dragon Talk To Type Software
• Dragon Talk To Type Software

• You can use speech-to-text on Microsoft Word through the 'Dictate' feature.
• With Microsoft Word's 'Dictate' feature, you can write using a microphone and your own voice.
• When you use Dictate, you can say 'new line' to create a new paragraph and add punctuation simply by saying the punctuation aloud.
• If you're not satisfied with Word's built-in speech-to-text feature, you can use a third-party program like Dragon Home.

While typing is certainly the most common way to create and edit documents in Microsoft Word, you're not limited to using a keyboard.

Use dictation to talk instead of type on your PC. Dictation uses speech recognition, which is built into Windows 10, so there's nothing you need to download and install to use it. To start dictating, select a text field and press the Windows logo key + H to open the dictation toolbar. Control your computer by voice with speed and accuracy. Dragon speech recognition software is better than ever. Talk and your words appear on the screen. Say commands and your computer obeys. Dragon is 3x faster than typing and it's 99% accurate. Master Dragon right out of the box, and start experiencing big productivity gains immediately. Dragon Talk is executively produced by Greg Tito, Shelly Mazzanoble & Wizards of The Coast. Show production by Lisa Carr & Ryan Marth of Siren Sound. Podcast recording, editing, mixing and mastering by Ryan Marth & Siren Sound. Dragon Talk: Jamie Flecknoe, Lore You Should Know on Barovia. Dragon Home v15 speech recognition helps you get more done on your PC by voice. Dictate documents, send email, search the web, and more. Designed using Nuance.

Word supports speech-to-text, which lets you dictate your writing using voice recognition.

Speech-to-text in Word is convenient and surprisingly accurate, and can help anyone who has issues typing with a typical keyboard.

You can use speech-to-text in Microsoft Word in the same way on both Mac and PC.

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How to use speech-to-text on Word using Dictate

Make sure you have a microphone connected to your computer. This can be built-in, like on a laptop, or a separate mic that you plug into the USB or audio jack.

It doesn't matter which type you use, though the best kind of mic to use is a headset, as it won't need to compete with as much background noise as a built-in microphone.

Dragon Speak To Type

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1. In Microsoft Word, make sure you're in the 'Home' tab at the top of the screen, and then click 'Dictate.'

2. You should hear a beep, and the dictate button will change to include a red recording light. It's now listening for your dictation.

3. Speak clearly, and Word should transcribe everything you say in the current document. Speak punctuation aloud as you go. You can also say 'New line,' which has the same effect as pressing the Enter or Return key on the keyboard.

4. When you're done dictating, click 'Dictate' a second time or turn it off using your voice by saying, 'Turn the dictate feature off.'

You can still type with the keyboard while Dictate is on, but if you click outside of Word or switch to another program, Dictate will turn itself off.

Want to change languages? You can click the downward arrow on the Dictate button to choose which of nine or so languages you want to speak. You might also see additional 'Preview Languages,' which are still in beta and may have lower accuracy.

Dragon Talk To Type Software

Speech-to-text alternatives

You're not limited to using the Dictate feature built into Word. While not as popular as they once were, there are several commercial speech-to-text apps available which you can use with Word.

The most popular of these, Dragon Home, performs the same kind of voice recognition as Word's Dictate, but it also lets you control Word, format text, and make edits to your text using your voice. It works with nearly any program, not just Word.

Related coverage from Tech Reference:

Dragon NaturallySpeaking (also known as Dragon for PC, or DNS)^[1] is a speech recognition software package developed by Dragon Systems of Newton, Massachusetts, which was acquired first by Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products and later by Nuance Communications. It runs on Windowspersonal computers. Version 15 (Professional Individual and Legal Individual),^[2] which supports 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 7, 8 and 10, was released in August 2016.^[3][4] The macOS version is called Dragon Professional Individual for Mac, version 6^[5] or Dragon for Mac.

Features[edit]

Dragon NaturallySpeaking uses a minimal user interface. As an example, dictated words appear in a floating tooltip as they are spoken (though there is an option to suppress this display to increase speed), and when the speaker pauses, the program transcribes the words into the active window at the location of the cursor. (Dragon does not support dictating to background windows.) The software has three primary areas of functionality: voice recognition in dictation with speech transcribed as written text, recognition of spoken commands, and text-to-speech: speaking text content of a document. Voice profiles can be accessed by different computers in a networked environment, although the audio hardware and configuration must be identical to those of the machine generating the configuration. The Professional version allows creation of custom commands to control programs or functions not built into NaturallySpeaking.

History[edit]

Dr. James Baker laid out the description of a speech understanding system called DRAGON in 1975.^[6] In 1982 he and Dr. Janet M. Baker, his wife, founded Dragon Systems to release products centered around their voice recognition prototype.^[7] He was President of the company and she was CEO.

DragonDictate was first released for DOS, and utilized hidden Markov models, a probabilistic method for temporal pattern recognition. At the time, the hardware was not powerful enough to address the problem of word segmentation, and DragonDictate was unable to determine the boundaries of words during continuous speech input. Users were forced to enunciate one word at a time, clearly separated by a small pause after each word. DragonDictate was based on a trigram model, and is known as a discrete utterance speech recognition engine.^[8]

Dragon Systems released NaturallySpeaking 1.0 as their first continuous dictation product in 1997.^[9]

Joel Gould was the director of emerging technologies at Dragon Systems. Gould was the principal architect and lead engineer for the development of Dragon NaturallyOrganized (1.0), Dragon NaturallySpeaking Mobile Organizer (3.52), Dragon NaturallySpeaking (1.0 through 2.02), and DragonDictate for Windows (1.0). Gould also designed the tutorials in both DragonDictate for DOS version 2.0 and Dragon Talk.^{[citation needed]}

The company was then purchased in June 2000 by Lernout & Hauspie, a Belgium-based corporation that was subsequently found to have been perpetrating financial fraud.^[10] Following the all-share deal advised by Goldman Sachs, Lernout & Hauspie declared bankruptcy in November 2000. The deal was not originally supposed to be all stock and the unavailability of the Goldman Sachs team to advise concerning the change in terms was one of the grounds of the Bakers' subsequent lawsuit. The Bakers had received stock worth hundreds of millions of US dollars, but were only able to sell a few million dollars' worth before the stock lost all its value as a result of the accounting fraud. The Bakers sued Goldman Sachs for negligence, intentional misrepresentation and breach of fiduciary duty, which in January 2013 led to a 23-day trial in Boston. The jury cleared Goldman Sachs of all charges.^[11] Following the bankruptcy of Lernout & Hauspie, the rights to the Dragon product line were acquired by ScanSoft of Burlington, Massachusetts, also a Goldman Sachs client. In 2005 ScanSoft launched a de facto acquisition of Nuance Communications, and rebranded itself as Nuance.^[12]

As of 2012 LG Smart TVs include voice recognition feature powered by the same speech engine as Dragon NaturallySpeaking.^[13]

Versions[edit]

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 is available in the following languages: UK English, US English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and Japanese (aka 'Dragon Speech 11' in Japan).

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^Sarnataro, Valerie (2012-11-08). 'Dragon NaturallySpeaking (DNS) 12 Review'. technologyguide.com. Technology Guide. Retrieved 2013-07-25.
2. ^'Nuance Announces Major New Releases of Dragon for Windows and Mac OS X'. Retrieved 2016-08-22.
3. ^'Nuance product support for Microsoft Windows Vista'. Archived from the original on 2009-12-15. Retrieved 2009-12-15.
4. ^'Nuance product support for Microsoft Windows 7'. 2010. Retrieved 16 Aug 2010.
5. ^'Nuance Announces Major New Releases of Dragon for Windows and Mac OS X'. 2016. Retrieved 2016-08-22.
6. ^Baker, James K. (1975). 'The DRAGON System - An Overview'. IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. 23 (1): 24–29. doi:10.1109/TASSP.1975.1162650.
7. ^'History of Speech Recognition and Transcription Software'. Retrieved 2013-07-12.
8. ^'DragonDictate product information'. Retrieved 2010-02-03.
9. ^'Dragon NaturallySpeaking 1.0 released'. Retrieved 2010-02-03.
10. ^'Dragon Systems purchased by Lernout & Hauspie'. New York Times. 2001-05-07. Retrieved 2010-02-03.
11. ^'Goldman Is Cleared Over a Sale Gone Awry'. New York Times. 2013-01-23. Retrieved 2013-01-23.
12. ^'ScanSoft and Nuance to Merge'. 2005-05-09. Archived from the original on 2010-05-28. Retrieved 2010-02-03.
13. ^'Samsung and LG smart TVs share your voice data behind the fine print'. ConsumerReports. 2015-02-09. Retrieved 2016-06-10.

External links[edit]

• Official website for Nuance Communications

Dragon Talk To Type Software