Article Writing Need Not Be a Chore With Voice Recognition Software

Most folks will agree that the most onerous part of the article writing is the chore involved in typing the article, editing and correcting it for submission. Most folks involved in writing articles have no trouble advent up with ideas and visualizing the outline, but reducing it all to writing takes a lot of time.

When writing articles or producing the blog for my affordable self catering Cape Town accommodation, I use speech recognition software which makes the whole task enjoyable and then a lot easier.


I was forced some years ago to use the speech recognition software that came as part of Microsoft Office 2003 because I was working where the Indian secretary had trouble understanding my Cape Town, South Africa, accent and normal dictation did not work for us. I am surprised to find how little is written on the Internet about the successful use of speech recognition for writing or blogging. In fact, the general consensus seems to be that it's a waste of time to even try it.

I had a lot of years of useful assistance out of Microsoft office 2003 which has great speech recognition capability. among the problems that I had to overcome, even so, was the fact that it comes only with an American male and female profile and doesn't cater to folks who speak with different accents. yet I got by for a lot of years by learning to pronounce certain words such as "fast" and "tomato" with a USA accent. The great thing about the software, even so, was that you are able to train the computer to recognize words that might be present in your language that are not recognised in the USA.

When I upgraded to MS office 2007, I was devastated to find that speech recognition was no longer offered. Although it's now accessible as part of VISTA, I did some research to find voice recognition software that would be independent of the office installation and found that Nuance's Dragon " Naturally Speaking 10 " seem to be the best accessible.

Having installed the software has really made my article writing and blogging successful; with an unbelievably high rate of speed and accuracy. among the great benefits of Dragon is that it comes with a choice of accents, among which is the UK English and that is the one that works for me. There are also South East Asian and Indian English versions.

This article doesn't attempt to provide instructions for setting up your speech or voice recognition software in MS Office or Dragon. You will find this information on the relevant websites or in the instructions with the software. Here are some pointers based on experience that will help you to make best use of it.

Firstly you need a fair amount of computing capability. Installing the files takes a couple of GB, and as you use the software it builds up voice files which also become quite large. The first thing is to get yourself a decent headset and experience shows that the highest level of accuracy is obtained if you have a USB voice recognition headset. This is the type that has only one earpiece with the band across the head. I do use a headset with the normal twin jack plugs at work though and it's only marginally less accurate.

The next thing that one has to do is to train the software. Yes, it is able to be installed and set up to operate with the minimum of training but your accuracy will suffer. The training is simple; one just has to set up your microphone by letting the computer adjust the volume, after which training consists of reading from a variety of texts that are presented. The variety provides you to choose what might be more suitable for a specific type of article but also gives a variety of contexts for the computer to recognize. Take the time to read a number of training sessions even if you don't wish to do them all at one time. It will make an enormous difference to the accuracy with which the software recognizes what you are saying. Dragon's software can be tasked to scan your existing documents in "My Documents" just like your correspondence in Outlook to build up information about the manner that you write and also your style and vocabulary to make sure a high degree of accuracy. How cool is that?

Nuance claims that most folks type than average of 35 words a minute with only 58% accuracy, but speak 120 words a minute. Only those with truly proficient typing skills are likely to be able to type more than 100 words a minute. it's truly rewarding to be able to lean back in your chair, relaxed and ready to produce, and just talk to your computer as if you were talking to an audience or to a friend. As you talk, you will see the type appearing in a steady stream in your application. There is more good news- you are able to use voice recognition software in almost every application, from Word through Excel, and in mail applications such as Outlook and even your Gmail. If you are in business, just imagine how great it's to simply talk your response to an e-mail and send the reply inside a couple of minutes.

You will need to edit your work after dictation and one ought to beware of becoming too confident about the software accuracy, so do take the time to read it through before you hit the "send" or the "save" button. The kind of errors that may occur because of annunciation can be that the software types "owner is" rather than "onerous", or "I scream " rather than "ice cream", One requires to enunciate your words clearly to get the highest degree of accuracy and to speak in a regular and continuous flow.

maybe a burden has been lifted from you, and you will abbruptly find improved productivity with speech recognition software to create more and more exciting articles.