Dragon boasts accuracy levels of 99% and has done so for many years now. While the out-of-the-box speech recognition accuracy levels have made it usable from the get-go, it’s not infallible and you will still have to add words to the vocabulary or correct misrecognitions when they crop up.
One trick we suggest to clients is to look away from the screen when you’re dictating. Some of our users come from a history of dictating into a digital recorder where there isn’t a visual representation to guide them, so this comes quite naturally.
The idea is to avoid getting distracted by misrecognitions or errors that may come up while maintaining your train of thought. When you’re watching words appear on the screen, seeing something come up that’s at odds with what you said has a way of throwing you off balance. Our natural instinct would want to intercept errors to keep things going smoothly.
However, it’s a much better idea to get used to correcting and proofing once you’ve completed a paragraph or once the entire document is drafted.
An even better tip is to add custom words you may encounter to your vocabulary before you start with a longer document to adhere to the a-stitch-in-time principle.