Dragon Naturally Speaking - is it any good???

http://tinyurl.com/29dfm69 - I've got to get that out of the way before going any further.

They also have an online demo that should answer every single one of those questions for you.

Here is a sentence exactly as I typed it:

Dragon Naturally Speaking won't automatically correct your grammar mistakes.

Here is the same exact sentence spoken through Dragon after months of training the program and working with it to recognize my voice and speech patterns:


Dragon NaturallySpeaking will automatically correct your Grandma mistake.

As you can see, I am less than thrilled with the results. To answer your first question, you really do need a strong understanding of grammar to use Dragon. Example:


I copied and pasted the following phrase from an email I just received:

Before you go, we have one question for you. Would you recommend us to a friend? Please click below and let us know!

Here is how this sentence was typed through Dragon Naturally Speaking:

Before you go (me speaking: comma), we have one question for you (me speaking: period). Would you recommend us to a friend (me speaking: question mark)? Please click below and let us know (me speaking: exclamation point)!

To answer your specific question, if you want quotation marks, you have to say open quotes "bla bla bla" and then closed quotes.

By the way, I'm using Dragon Naturally Speaking Version 8. I believe the newest edition is version 10. Also, I'm hearing-impaired and I don't really like the sound of my voice - I hate talking into things, especially phones. So this may negatively affect my opinion and ability to fully use Dragon.

Random musings and add-on observations:

I've spent the last couple of hours playing with the Dragon software. With a brand-new computer, it seems to work with the fewest glitches - all my previous attempts were made with an older computer. (I transferred all of those Dragon sound files I'd trained and worked with to the new computer).

I ditched the pricey headset/mic combo for a cheap clip-on plug-in microphone, which is a little bit annoying because I have to remember to unclip the mike when I step away from the computer. But suddenly there are no more sound quality/connection problems. Before the pricey headset/mic combo I had a wireless Bluetooth mic, and it never worked right. So going back to a basic piece of equipment - the clip-on, plug in wired microphone, may actually be a better choice.

Whenever you throw a wireless mic into the mix, Bluetooth or standard, you're getting convenience but you'll also do more babysitting of your PC and all the accessories. (This is why I quit using Dragon originally - I was totally p**d at how incredibly difficult it was to make the damned thing recognize and communicate with my voice on a consistent basis.)

LOL maybe I'll write a more detailed review after I spend a few more hours playing with the Dragon software and my new computer. This is the first brand-new PC I've owned in at least 10 years - all of my other machines were always used equipment.

I recently purchased Dragon Version 10. It does a fairly good job of interpreting your spoken words. As Julie mentioned, you must tell it to punctuate. What I found, is YOU MUST SPEAK CLEARLY. Doing this causes me to tire fairly quickly and I begin to mumble. my tongue starts to get tired and I slur my words. Dragon merrily goes on inserting what it thinks you said, typing nonsense sentences. Then, you must carefully go through your work and correct the nonsense words.

I don't think I'll be using it much.

Well, Dragon's not new. It's been around for many, many years. The latest version works pretty well, provided you put in the time to train it. Depending on your particular voice pattern, it can take more or less time to train the software. After it's trained, though, it can work very well.

Also, key to any voice recognition software is a good microphone or headset (I prefer the latter myself), working in a relatively quiet environment, and having a good quality sound card in your system.

The newest version of dragon is excellent, even without training. If it screws up, it's because the speaker didn't do his job.

But it won't help with grammar or punctuation, of course. Dyslexic or not, this is your responsibility. And there's no excuse for anyone with spellcehck or a dictionary to misspell words.

The software will attempt to punctuate based on how you talk, just as the way you phrase a question or if you hesitate a moment in a sentence. But there is no voice recognition program that can do this will full accuracy. Part of it is in the training, but no matter how good the software you will have to go back and fix a lot of punctuation and grammatical issues.

You might want to watch some of the demo videos: http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/products/additional/feature-demos.asp which show you how you have to do near paragraphs and what not. From that, you do need to say comma, semicolon, etc. as well as new paragraph, etc.

posting to get to later.

Jamesaritchie said:

And there's no excuse for anyone with spellcehck or a dictionary to misspell words.

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Hmm.

A friend of mine has a Dragon Naturally Speaking app on her IPHONE. I saw it today, and man, did I want to steal the phone from her, LOL. It worked great, although the primary intent is for simple commands, not dictating any complex writing.

As you can see from my motto, I use it. It will not check for grammar and you do have to give the commands for punctuation. I use it with my Microsoft Word program. The Dragon helps me because I suck when it comes to typing. Once I have dictated it into Word I can use the spell check in Word to catch any misspelled words. If you have trouble with punctuation, my recommendation is to look for a copy of "The Little Brown Handbook". Should be able to get a copy of it relatively cheap and even a local college bookstore should carry it. Inside it, you will find every rule that applies to English that you will need. My copy has become my best friend over the last eight years. That and my Thesaurus. Hope that helps you.

I've used it. The program often gives you unexpected words when it is just guessing, and you need to edit very carefully after you have input whatever it is you are saying. Otherwise it writes very quickly and is "mostly" pretty accurate. I think it is reasonable for someone who does not like to type, or has a great deal to type. I find that nothing is 100 % accurate. When I scan pages into my documents, I get all sorts of weird artifacts and "guesses" however it cuts down re-typing time by quite a deal. (I have had to scan or use naturally speaking to input several novels I wrote before I used a computer). It sure saved me saving time. Was it worth the money? I'd try to get it on sale. I have been warned against buying the student version because you cannot update, and dragon does not recognize that edition or give technical assistance. Get the 99$ version, not the 45$ version.

I purchased DSN#10 for $40.00 at Walmart. It is good.

I tried it two years ago and it did not work for me. In the end, there were more corrections I had to make than anything else. I only did one paragraph with that thing before I got tired of it and went right back to typing. It might be better now, though, but I am scared to try it again and then find out I wasted my money.

Magali said:

I tried it two years ago and it did not work for me. In the end, there were more corrections I had to make than anything else. I only did one paragraph with that thing before I got tired of it and went right back to typing. It might be better now, though, but I am scared to try it again and then find out I wasted my money.

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Yeah, training a voice-recognition (VR) program is a key element to its efficiency. I once input about half of a handwritten novel using a VR program. It gets better the more you use and train it, but it still makes mistakes. ('Training' means using the correction tool within the program, not just manually correcting the manuscript in the word processor.)

That's why VR isn't much help for people with severe dyslexia: they won't see the errors the VR program makes any better than they see the errors they type themselves.

In my experience, VR doesn't save time, due to the time spent training and correcting. It didn't take more time over the course of that half-novel I did, but it didn't take less, either.

IMO, what VR is good for is people who have issues with their hands, such as a repetitive-strain injury or arthritis. You definitely TYPE a lot less using VR.

But over the course of the work, it takes the same amount of time, it still makes a lot of errors that need to be spotted and corrected, and actual editing is nearly impossible. (By 'actual editing', I'm talking about things you do during rewrite such as deleting sentences or paragraphs, moving phrases around, inserting a word here, deleting a word there, changing a three-word phrase into a single word or a whole new paragraph, and so on.)

It also does nothing about punctuation and grammar errors. If you forget to speak the command for a period/full stop, it leaves it out AND doesn't capitalise the next word. If you speak a comma in a place that renders a comma splice, it inserts the comma right where you told it to. If you speak a plural verb for a singular subject, it types exactly what you said.

Finally, Philip Pullman tells a wonderful story about his wife reading his handwritten manuscript into the computer using VR. The mailman walked by, the dogs started to bark, and the program typed 'bark bark bark'. Seeing this, she started laughing, and it typed 'ha ha ha ha'. Right in the middle of his scene!

Anyone who thinks that all they have to do is speak into the microphone using VR and they're done has a big surprise in store.

Terie said:

Yeah, training a voice-recognition (VR) program is a key element to its efficiency. I once input about half of a handwritten novel using a VR program. It gets better the more you use and train it, but it still makes mistakes. ('Training' means using the correction tool within the program, not just manually correcting the manuscript in the word processor.)

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Oh, I do not have time to train. I feel that if I use that instead of just typing, despite the fact I write two pages per hour when I'm not distracted, approximately 1,500 words depending on sentence length, dialog and how many paragraphs on each page, it's going to take much longer to write the chapter.

Terie said:

That's why VR isn't much help for people with severe dyslexia: they won't see the errors the VR program makes any better than they see the errors they type themselves.

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Yes, it sucks.

Terie said:

In my experience, VR doesn't save time, due to the time spent training and correcting. It didn't take more time over the course of that half-novel I did, but it didn't take less, either.

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I agree 100%. I had to go through that. Wasn't fun at all.

Terie said:

IMO, what VR is good for is people who have issues with their hands, such as a repetitive-strain injury or arthritis. You definitely TYPE a lot less using VR.

But over the course of the work, it takes the same amount of time, it still makes a lot of errors that need to be spotted and corrected, and actual editing is nearly impossible. (By 'actual editing', I'm talking about things you do during rewrite such as deleting sentences or paragraphs, moving phrases around, inserting a word here, deleting a word there, changing a three-word phrase into a single word or a whole new paragraph, and so on.)

It also does nothing about punctuation and grammar errors. If you forget to speak the command for a period/full stop, it leaves it out AND doesn't capitalise the next word. If you speak a comma in a place that renders a comma splice, it inserts the comma right where you told it to. If you speak a plural verb for a singular subject, it types exactly what you said.

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Oh, boy...

Terie said:

Finally, Philip Pullman tells a wonderful story about his wife reading his handwritten manuscript into the computer using VR. The mailman walked by, the dogs started to bark, and the program typed 'bark bark bark'. Seeing this, she started laughing, and it typed 'ha ha ha ha'. Right in the middle of his scene!

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I laughed so hard @ this I had to stop for a minute to catch my breath!! Thanks! You made my day!

Terie said:

Anyone who thinks that all they have to do is speak into the microphone using VR and they're done has a big surprise in store.

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Tell me about it. I bought it 2 years ago thinking I wouldn't have to type again, and I lost that bet. If I ever have any problems with my hands or anything that prevents me from typing or writing longhand, I will just buy a digital voice recorder and hire a friend to type my novels for me.

I use Dragon a lot (Version 10, Preferred) and I think it's fabulous--but then I can barely type because I have a lot of problems with my hands, so I don't have as much choice as others.

Remember that the later versions of Windows come with a voice recognition included. I prefer Dragon, as I think it's easier to use and more fully-featured: but it's a way to find out how you feel about these programs before you shell out any hard cash on them.

I have version 9, and it is a huge improvement over earlier versions. I used to get so frustrated with v.5 because it would type my attempts to correct mistakes: "Undo that" "select that" etc. until there was a whole string that you had to keyboard out.

V.9 is about 85-90% accurate for me, sometimes that's because I'm using archaic words or my pronunciation throws it off. There is a "Correct that" feature that allows you to train it to recognize words it is mishearing, and that greatly improves it.

I did get a better headset microphone and spent some time training. I also used mine to enter about 75,000 words of a handwritten novel, and for that it was a lifesaver on my hands. Yes, mistakes crept in, but I knew it wasn't a final draft anyway and that's what rewrites/revisions are for.

P.S. There was a minister in my storytelling group years ago that used an old Dragon version, and every time they said "Jesus" the program heard "cheeses." Cheeses saves you!

AngelicaRJackson said:

I did get a better headset microphone and spent some time training. I also used mine to enter about 75,000 words of a handwritten novel, and for that it was a lifesaver on my hands.

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The headset that came with it seemed cheap and broke after a month. What headsets are best for this program?

Really, unless you have a serious accent, or simply can't speak clearly for whatever reason, the latest version of Dragon requires almost no training at all for most speakers. In my experience, it's better out of the box than the previous version was after training.

My problem with Dragon is that it works extremely well, but I can't write fiction with it. It turns my fiction into unpublishable junk. For me, writing fiction and speaking fiction are very different skills.

Jamesaritchie said:

Really, unless you have a serious accent, or simply can't speak clearly for whatever reason, the latest version of Dragon requires almost no training at all for most speakers. In my experience, it's better out of the box than the previous version was after training.

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Really? I didn't know that. Thanks. I will consider buying it like 6 months from now.