I have been a tech geek for many years. I have also been waiting for things guaranteed to me as a kid. They were supposed to be here by the year 2000. You know, flying cars and self-driving cars. Of course, we now have both to a very limited extent.
As an adult geek, I have been waiting for another marvelous tech thing. Being able to dictate and have my words immediately converted to typed text. Wow, what a time saver since I can talk much more quickly than I can type.
I am waiting for that description in the previous paragraph to include one basic word, “accurately.”
Now, dictation software came out a few years ago. In 1990, a new software company appeared that called their new software, “Dragon Dictate.” At the time, it was amazing. You could speak into your computer’s microphone and have your words transcribed as typed text. However, the accuracy was not there. I tested that or a similar product with a friend of my years ago. We got a kick out of pretending to sneeze or cough while the other was speaking. (Amongst other unspeakable noises.) The software tried but could not quite figure out the words but it tried and succeeded (?)…badly.
I have tested two major competitors in the documents with dictation availability baked in. The first was Microsoft Word’s version of dictation. I my opinion, I would rate it 3.5 out of 5. There were many misspellings and confusion of words. I did not make a scientific measure of it, but my “feels like index” is that it took me longer overall to dictate it, find errors, and then edit errors as it would have taken to type it out the first time.
Next, I tested Google Docs with its built in dictation. It was better than Word’s, but not by an enormous amount. I did not have to do quite as many corrections; however, it still took longer than typing would have. My rating, 3.8/5.
And one thing that really irks me about both and all others that I tested. You have to give it punctuation help. You must say, “period” to end a sentence. Along with “question mark” which is sometimes correct and other times typed out the two words. “New line,” “new paragraph,” “comma,” and “delete last word,” seemed consistently correct.
I mentioned several months ago, a good similar app named, “Voice In Voice Typing” at dictanote.co/voicein. But this application is only for web documents.
I feel about the same as I stated over four years ago when last I wrote about this topic. “But in my opinion, for day to day work. I do not believe it is up to speed dot, dot, dot yet.” Yes, an ellipsis (…) would not work if you state it that way it types, “ellipsis” which is not that helpful.
“Read Aloud,” works well on both Word and Google (built into both apps). You should try those out. I get Word to read my columns before I send them to the DNR for publication and many times find errors I typed. Something may not sound right as one of the “people” read it back aloud to me. It helps me greatly.
I will add here that much of my dictation on my Android phone works well. Although, I do not speak paragraphs each time. Usually just short phrases.
