As with any text, you proofread it before you hit send and the same goes for text created by Dragon speech recognition.

The speech-to-text software by Nuance will never make a spelling error, but it may occasionally confuse words for something that sounds similar.

Therefore we’ve put together a step-by-step guide on proofreading with Dragon so that you know how to check your dictation for these anomalies efficiently and quickly.

Read Back

Thanks to this command, your Dragon will read out your text for you. But why is this helpful?

As those who write a lot of reports or send lots of emails will know, it’s not always easy to spot your own spelling or grammatical errors.

However, if you have spotted an error in your text, read our manual correction guide here. Read back offers a fresh pair of eyes, or should we say voice!

The synthesized voice reads back your text exactly how it is written; after all, mistakes are a lot easier to hear than to spot in a large body of text.

By simply saying ‘readback’ to Dragon, you will be able to listen out for errors and correct them as you go along.

Additionally, for the visually impaired, users can copy emails or other texts into the Dragon window and command the software to readback the text.

Ultimately, this allows blind users to respond to emails independently.

Playback

The playback command is another great way to proofread with Dragon software.

Whilst you are dictating, Dragon records your voice. Hence, you are able to play that recording back out loud.

Nuance recommends scanning the text with your eyes whilst the software is playing back your dictation.

This allows you to easily spot and amend any errors.

Functioning commands to playback are: Play That, playback, play document, and play window.

More specifically, play line, play paragraph play screenplay to here, play from here; but of course, these latter commands require a specific part of the text to be selected.

How do you correct an error once you spot one?

To correct an error whilst playing back with Dragon, press the minus key (-) on your keyboard.

This will stop the playback and a correction box will pop up on your screen which will show the last four words spoken.

You can then select the correct word from the suggested list; alternatively, if the option you need isn’t listed, you can type the desired word in manually.

Next, click OK and the playback will continue.

It’s as simple as that!

Hopefully, these tips make proofreading with Dragon less painful, but if you have any troubles at all feel free to leave a comment below and we’ll do our best to resolve that issue.

As a Nuance Premier Partner, we offer Dragon training services in various other areas.

If you think you want to get the best from your Dragon and think you’d benefit from training, please get in touch.