Did you know that having a good singing voice isn’t a born trait?

Most ‘bad singers’ can discern musical notes perfectly well; all they really lack is training – Very similar to using your voice to dictate.

Many people upon initial impression, state that speech recognition software ‘isn’t accurate’.

However, it is actually the way in which they are speaking that isn’t accurate.

Much like the fact above, perfect dictation isn’t something you immediately know how to do; you must learn and train your voice to achieve the best results.

In the spirit of World Voice Day, our expert trainers are giving their insight into our training courses and sharing our Dragon dictation tips!

Audio Check is Your Best Friend!

Dragon dictation tip number 1: Our voices have a tendency to change slightly.

Whether it be due to tiredness, stress or that awful cold that you just can’t shake, we’ve got the solution.

Simply say “check audio” into your microphone and Dragon will do just that.

As a result, the accuracy and recognition will improve and the change in your voice won’t affect your dictation.

Avoid. Dictating. By. Word. (Like this)

Tip number 2: The best speech recognition results are achieved by using your voice as you normally would.

In fact, our Training Manager Paul says that speaking in sentences, in an almost conversational manner is actually easier for the software to understand.

Those who are new to using Dragon speech recognition fall into the trap of thinking that the technology will not be able to keep up with them.

This is actually the opposite.

Speech-to-text thrives off sentences as the intelligence uses words before and after one another to determine which word the speaker intends.

In the case of homographs, for example, voice recognition takes into account the context of the words surrounding the homograph to print the correct spelling.

Bonus Tip: Use Dragon Voice Commands! They speed up dictation time and make the process easier.

Watch Dragon battle homographs in this video:

Practice Your Bossy Voice

Dragon speech recognition was created to assist its users. Therefore, you can ask it to do things for you.

These are called commands. Commonly used commands include “Correct That”, “Open Microsoft Word” and “Play That”.

On the occasions that you are dictating commands, our technical expert Liam suggests using a firm tone of voice.

That is to say, using a slightly harsher voice when giving Dragon a command will incur more clear and accurate outcomes.

Don’t Freestyle

Much like a singer would train their voice and learn the lyrics, as a speech-to-text author you too must think about what you’re going to say before you speak it.

This helps you create a better quality of work first and foremost. Secondly, it will affirm tip number two – speaking in full sentences.

If authors don’t plan what they are saying before they dictate, there tend to be many pauses.

As mentioned previously, these pauses confuse the software as it cannot analyse the context of the sentence as a whole.

Therefore if you take a moment to compose your thoughts before you begin dictating, there will be fewer pauses.

Thus, the accuracy will be better, as will the documents you create.

With these four tips from our technical team, you will be unstoppable!

Need further guidance? Check out our range of training courses!