Dictation Selection commands

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In my previous post about Dictation commands, I listed a bunch of commands with little to no details on what they actually did. I'm going to go thru them, section by section, and describe them in more details. Today, I'm going to talk about the selection commands that help with dictation...

First, here are the selection commands:

  • “Select [word or phrase in the document]”
  • “Select [word or phrase in the document] [through/to] [word or phrase in the document]”
  • “Select the word [word in the document]”
  • “Select [next/previous] [word/sentence/paragraph]”
  • “Select [next/previous] [number] [letter(s)/word(s)/sentence(s)/paragraph(s)]”
  • “Select document”
  • “Select that”
  • “Clear selection”
  • “Un-select that”

Selecting words and phrases in teh document by referring to the words and phrases directly

Let’s start with “Select [word or phrase in the document] ”. Using this command, you can select any word or phrase in the document you’re editing. There is one requirement, though. That document must support the Text Services Framework. You can read more about why that’s true here. Examples of using that command while I’m dictating this blog posting might be: “Select Text Services Framework”.

A variation of that command, “Select the word [word in the document] ” allows me to say things like “Select the word that”, which would find the word “that” in the document and select it. That command is very different from “Select that” which I’ll discuss in a moment.

You can also select long passages of text using the “through” or “to” version of the command: “Select [word or phrase in the document] [through/to] [word or phrase in the document] ”. For example, if I wanted to select all of the commands up above in this post, I could say “Select open quote thru un-select that”.

Selecting words and phrases in the document by units, like letter, word, sentence, paragraph, and document

You can also select words the next or previous word, sentence, or paragraph by using the “Select [next/previous] [word/sentence/paragraph] ” command. For example, to select this paragraph, I could say “Select previous paragraph” while I’m at the end of the paragarph.

Similarly, you can select multiple “units” by simply inserting a number into the command: “Select [next/previous] [number] [letter(s)/word(s)/sentence(s)/paragraph(s)] ”. For example, while in this paragraph, I could select this paragraph, and the previous, by saying “Select previous 2 paragraphs”.

I can also select the entire document by saying: “Select document”.

Referring to the previous utterance using “that”

If I just finished an utterance (an utterance is a single phrase dictated with silence around it), I could say “Select that”, and that utterance would be selected. If I just finished editing the phrase with the keyboard, we try and select the most likely thing you meant when you say “Select that”. “That” is a harder concept to describe than it is to use; you’ll just have to try it out if this doesn’t make much sense. ;-)

Clearing Selection

Once you’re done with the selection, you can clear it by using either “Clear selection” or “Un-select that”. You could also use other commands that might have the side effect of clearing the selection, like “Go to the end of the document”, or other navigational commands. But if you want to keep the IP in the same spot, just say “Clear selection”.