Who Uses Voice Dictation to Write?

[Manny]

Curious how many present use voice dictation to post here?

I do sometimes when I'm using my iPad. But you have to clean it up afterwards.

Andrewfi introduced me to it. Its crap on the desktop I find. The Apple one is quite good.

I use the iPhone to write articles now. I dictate it on the iPhone to an email, email it to myself, then polish it up on a desktop. Saves loads of time.

[andrewfi]

Although I might've introduced it to Manny, I have given up on it - again.

Perhaps I am fortunate. I can write fast and do not need to restructure my work too much, but the process of typing slows me down enough that my thoughts get formed in the time it takes to type.

When I try to dictate the speed is wrong and I lose track of my thoughts and the structure that I want to use.

I can imagine that form letters and the like dictation might be easier, even faster, but that's not what I do.

If I could think as fast as I can speak then I'd be cooking with gas. For a lot of my work I could be done quite a bit faster. On the other hand I can type at about 70 words per minute so maybe there's not too much of a margin for shorter pieces like emails.

[Manny]

I’d like to see the Apple version available on non-Apple desktops.

The dictate to email from your phone method I find very effective for getting big blocks of text in my head down quickly. Then you can play around with it, move the paragraphs up and down and add other content.

I’ve turned out some very decent original copy that way. It’s also useful for re-writing articles for different platforms. If you can read the article whilst you are simultaneously rewording it, you end up with a completely different version of the same article.

[andrewfi]

Yeah, the rewriting thing was a thing once. I very rarely do that these days, but when I do, I click a button on the software and out comes the new version. No more human intervention other than polishing if needed.