If you use Microsoft Windows and have
a headset microphone, as many gamers do, you could probably double your
typing speed immediately by using a little-known Windows feature.
Microsoft is low-key about the fact that Windows has a full-blown speech
recognition system. But instead of hunting and pecking while trying to
remember what you wanted to write, you could use Windows Speech
Recognition (WSR) to decide what to say, say it, and see the words
appear on the screen. However, some user skill is involved—don't expect
an immediate nirvana of effortless inputting.
Getting Started
Put on your headset microphone and hook it up. Click Start, then Control
Panel. You'll see a window with a list of applets. One of them is
Speech Recognition. Click it. You'll see a new window with five more
applets. Select Set Up Microphone and follow the directions to make sure
your mic will work with WSR.
When that's done, return to the Speech Recognition window and click
Start Speech Recognition. The WSR control bar will appear on the screen,
probably in the top center, and should look like this:
The circle on the left, surrounding the microphone icon, is initially
gray, meaning that WSR is not listening. The hatched vertical icon to
its right is the volume indicator. The gray rectangle in the middle that
says Off is the status readout. On the right end of the bar, the X is
the Close command and the bar is the Minimize command.
Talk-to-Type
Open a word processing document and put the cursor where you want to
start. Click the microphone icon in the WSR control bar so that the
circle around it turns blue and the status readout says Listening.
Start talking. Remember, you'll need to actually say the punctuation
marks aloud so the system will know where you want them. Say something
such as: "When in doubt, comma, scream and shout, comma, wave your arms,
comma and run about, period." If it worked, you should see this:
Editing
Now let's try some editing. For obvious reasons, you have decided to
change "about" to "for Congress." Say "select about," and the word about
will be highlighted. Then say "delete," and the highlighted word will
go away. Then say "for Congress." You should see this:
Now let's try something harder. Say "new line new line." This will
insert two carriage returns. Then say "you scream, comma I scream, comma
we all scream period," to get this.
Notice how it tripped over a homophone, mistaking ice cream for I
scream. Changing the mistake with WSR's Correction feature should help
the software avoid the problem in the future. Say "correct ice cream."
Notice that you need to pronounce the words that appear on the screen
(ice cream) not the words you meant to say originally (I scream.)
You should see something like this:
As you can see, WSR has generated a pop-up screen with possible
alternatives. In this case, one alternative involves different
capitalization and the other involves a homophone. Speak the number of
the alternative you want. It will become highlighted. Then say "okay."
(If you don't like any of the alternatives, say the correct text again
until, hopefully, it's included in the list. Alternately, you can say
"spell it," and speak the letters aloud, followed by "okay." And if you
really get stuck, you can use the keyboard.)
Menus
With a correction made, it's time to save your deathless prose. Say "show numbers." You should see something like this:
Notice that the menu items and actionable screen elements are now
covered by numbers. (The numbers will slowly fade in and out so you
don't have to remember what they are covering.) You'll want to click the
file item, which is covered by the number 5. To do that, say "click
five." You will then see the pop-up window with the file commands. You
can use the show-numbers command in that window to complete the action.
Also, from the original Notepad window, you can simply say "file" and
then "save," or "click file" and "click save," but using the
show-numbers command will give you more precision in windows that are
crammed with numerous possible commands.
Beyond
Now that you have seen what the WSR can do, go back to the original
Speech Recognition window that you accessed in the Control Panel and
peruse the other applets. Take the tutorial, print out the reference
card and study it, and conduct some of the recognition training. Try
using WSR with your favorite software.
Meanwhile, give yourself at least a couple of weeks to get used to this
new mode of composition. You can't expect to become productive without
some effort and practice, though it undoubtedly pales in comparison to
the effort and practice it took to learn to type.
The biggest adjustment will probably be the habitual employment of
accurate and precise pronunciation to enhance the machine's recognition
accuracy. Remember, you are controlling a machine with your voice, not
talking to a person. It doesn't matter if you sound oddly stiff.
The only other serious alternative for general-purpose desktop speech
recognition is Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS) from Nuance
Communications. WSR is already present on your Windows machine, and it
requires only the acquisition of a microphone. DNS must be purchased and
installed but comes with a microphone. DNS has more reliable
recognition than WSR. Also, when you select text and then dictate
replacement text, DNS just writes over it rather than going through the
review procedure that WSR uses, making its use smoother. On the other
hand, DNS tends to bog down the machine and consumes more than 3
gigabytes of disk space. WSR is part of Windows and has no visible
effect on performance.
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