Dragon speech recognition software requires you to learn a new way of doing things. It’s not as simple as a plug-and-play in as much as you need to get to grips with a new “language”, which involves learning commands and a new rhythm of dictation for the best results.
Dictation is already a bit of a hurdle if you’re not used to it, but if you imagine you’re having a conversation over the phone it can get easier with practice. This is why email’s usually a good place to get going, taking the edge off the complexities of converting your habit of thinking and typing with your fingers to thinking and speaking.
One of the crucial things to master when it comes to dictation and Dragon, is becoming more familiar with the art of knowing when to pause. It may seem strange that you need to get used to the silent moments but it’s how Dragon operates, knowing how to distinguish between a command a pure dictation.
While it’s important to differentiate between commands and dictation, the pause can also become useful in separating utterances. An utterance is simply a bit of speech that’s separated by two pauses. For instance, if you say “Cape Town’s most popular as a tourist destination between December and February” without pausing that’s one utterance.
If you had to say “Scratch That”, Dragon would delete this whole section of dictation, reading it as the last thing you said. If, however, you said… say “Cape Town’s most popular as a tourist destination… between December and February”, that would be interpreted as two utterances, which would require you to say “Scratch That Two Times” to get rid of the entire dictation.
So, while it may take some trial and error getting used to the software constantly trying to transcribe any bit of sound it hears, it will also take practice to get into the rhythm of dictation and knowing how to interpret your pauses for optimal usage.