Forum / Dragon Dictate

  • -5.thumb
    RW Spryszak
    Dec 31, 12:28pm

    Can't use it for most things, but for dialog - quite the revelation.

  • Mosaic_man_marcus.thumb
    Marcus Speh
    Dec 31, 01:35pm

    Use it for everything in fact, both for German and English. About 2000 words a day on the best days, written or rather dictated in considerably higher speed and better edited in the first place because when dictating (I use a recorder before piping it into Dragon) I don't tend to go back (thoug of course you can) and I don't think about punctuation and the loke...frees the mind. Quality of first draft, everyone else says is notably better. Taken me three months to get to this point though, dictation is SO different from typing, it's a different world, but it is a world where your VOICE is just that. And coice counts for a lot in my case at least.

  • -5.thumb
    RW Spryszak
    Dec 31, 02:19pm

    For me it takes dialog to a whole new level. the "writerly" junk just all goes away and the characters sound much more real. I don't know. It's magic.

  • Mugshotme_(3).thumb
    Mathew Paust
    Dec 31, 02:34pm

    I received a primitive transcribing program with a Sony digital recorder when I was a newspaper reporter, but I gave up trying to get the software to "learn" my voice. Beside, I've learned that I don't hear myself the way I sound. My ear seems to work better in my imagination for dialogue.

    I am curious about Dragon, tho...

  • Mosaic_man_marcus.thumb
    Marcus Speh
    Dec 31, 02:35pm

    I second that, Bob.

  • Mosaic_man_marcus.thumb
    Marcus Speh
    Dec 31, 06:12pm

    Mathew this software has become vastly better in only a couple of years...after many years of plateauing. Has to do with the computing ability of modern hardware, too.

  • Frankie Saxx
    Dec 31, 08:51pm

    Sad for me, I don't know of any dictation software that runs native on Ubuntu and I'm hopeless with Wine.

  • Dscf4986.thumb
    Andrew Stancek
    Jan 01, 01:30pm

    You will have to fill me in on this, Bob and Marcus. I used a primitive voice recorder for a few weeks some years back, but I don't think that's what you are talking about. So please do tell.

  • -5.thumb
    RW Spryszak
    Jan 01, 02:40pm

    Without trying to spound like a commercial, it is "speech recognition software." Essentially a light headset which includes a microphone that is plugged into your computer (PC or MAC, they have both) and translates your speaking into commands or typing.

    It was essentially made for handicapped computer users because you can get it to do all the functions your hands would do - opening programs, posting to the internet, even doing math spreadsheets i think.

    I've known a few writers who use it because "you think faster than you can type."

    For myself I don't usually suffer from that particular problem, since I hardly think at all.

    But I've found it to be a magnificent tool to use for dialog in a story because when you are speak your dialog aloud, which you have to do to get it to work, your ear will tell you whether or not the dialog is stilted or phony or forced. It's funny how speaking your dialog aloud, as in a play, can straighten out the phenomenon of having your words "sound like they were written instead of sounding as if they were spoken."

    The software must become "used" to your accent and diction before it will function flawlessly. This means that, initially, it will go through a period of "learning" your voice and voice patterns; you correct it as you go along and it remembers.

    It was relatively expensive when I first bought it a few years ago (I think around $100), and I don't know what it costs these days. But any Google search will lead you to it.

  • Dscf4986.thumb
    Andrew Stancek
    Jan 01, 04:25pm

    Thanks, Bob, I will google it, but these days I tend to buy nothing without recommendation of people whose judgment I trust.

    Would it be possible to use in the car? I spend way too much time driving and am always looking for ways of making that time useful. When I was using my tiny recorder, that is what I was doing, talking aloud in the car. But then I still had to go back and type out the nonsense that I recorded. If this saved that step...

  • Mosaic_man_marcus.thumb
    Marcus Speh
    Jan 01, 04:47pm

    You won't have to type it out anymore, Andrew and dictation in the car is possible—I dictate mostly into a small inexpensive digital recorder & the software then transcribes it to text; I do this on the street (busy city) while walking. Though the recognition is not 100% under those circumstances, it is still more than satisfying for me (I think on average I lose perhaps one word in 20 or so. When I dictate at home (headset or mike but in a quiet room) it is much better, namely 100% for most runs. Changed my writing life.

  • Mosaic_man_marcus.thumb
    Marcus Speh
    Jan 03, 07:15pm

    Found a blog post that describes the experience and the gains adequately:

    http://bit.ly/ZXHLy4

  • Dsc_7543.thumb
    Gloria Garfunkel
    Jan 03, 09:56pm

    It sounds like the way you are using it is very freeing. They tried to teach it to me at my job to fill in predetermined report templates instead of my own. It was agony. They used all these weird buzzwords like EST or Scientology. I quit the job pretty soon after.

  • -5.thumb
    RW Spryszak
    Jan 03, 10:43pm

    I'd quit at the first mention of Scientology too.

  • Mosaic_man_marcus.thumb
    Marcus Speh
    Jan 07, 07:51pm

    I just discovered that Henry James dictated his late work (due to carpal tunnel syndrome as a result of excessive letter writing it seems). Here is what Joseph Epstein has to say about the pros and cons of that in his 2012 essay "The James Cult" (New Criterion, Oct issue):

    "That certain style, the Jamesian style, is at the crux of the cult. Either one gets it or one doesn’t, and many people, even highly cultivated and well-read people, do not. It is a style in which each heavily nuanced sentence can sometimes seem a veritable barcarole. At other times the Jamesian sentence resembles a hawk, circling, circling, circling before plunging downward to strike off a penetrating observation or startling aperçu. As subordinate clause piles upon subordinate clause—especially in his late style when James took to dictating his prose to a typist—one occasionally forgets that the sentence under investigation has a subject and predicate. And yet, James’s style, for all its rococo circumlocution, did exactly what he wanted it to do, which was to capture consciousness in all its complexity."

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