The question, from an Unschooler, is:
What is the best app or program that records and prints what you say? (guess I'm wishing for a secretary to take clear dictation!)
....and can this app work well on cell phones and I pads....smaller devices, and with other background noise?
I imagine, being able to just reach over...'click' then record my thoughts....and see it after in print. Then the great work of revising and editing begins.
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I was going to have the remaining Q&A posts be paid-readers-only… BUT I honestly don’t have a solid answer to this question! I’d love input, based on your experiences. Ryan Frawley left a message to this on the earlier post, so I’m including his words, which are so useful.
Please share additional information, and I’d like to gift anyone who does with a month of free access to all in the Unschool—whether you’re a “free” reader or “paid” (in which case, a free month will be added to your subscription).
My only “ask”: please read through others’ responses so you’re not duplicating info. Here we go —
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From Ryan Frawley:
For the annual Q&A, for speech to text writing, it has to be Dragon Naturally speaking. It’s expensive - $350 USD for a one-time purchase - but it’s leagues ahead of anything else, and I’ve tried them all. In some ways, I owe my writing career to it, because I couldn’t write nearly as much as I do without it.
They have an internet-connected cellphone version, but it’s garbage. Get the real one for a proper computer, and it will change your writing life.
Note from Alison: do check out Ryan’s work—his amazing essay collection or novel. He regularly posts thought-provoking and beautiful essays on Medium.
No, he didn’t post a comment here to have me promo his work! I just enjoy his work. Along with writing strength, he has a generous spirit, something I value in a writer.
So when he reviews and shares a product, I’m going to listen!
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But perhaps this is out of price range or—as noted in the question—you really want this for smaller devices.
Here is one link I discovered and read. As well as app/software suggestions, there are some notes on how to go about it—enunciation, verbalizing punctuation, and more.
https://zapier.com/blog/best-text-dictation-software/
I regret that I’m not more knowledgeable on this topic. I suspect such a thing might change my writing life, and am curious to try Ryan’s suggestion.
Thoughts?
I tried a bunch of programs over the years. Acquisition costs, learning curves, (yours and your machine’s), unintuitive commands, etc. And once you’ve got it mastered, you get a cold, and it can’t transcribe a word you’ve dictated.
The best I found was dictating on my first Apple I-Phone. It was remarkably accurate getting medical terms down, for example. Later iterations were not quite as good -I recently found trying dictate a short story while in stop and go traffic at the Massey Tunnel didn’t work well - but they were still pretty good. You’re going to proofread, edit, and revise anyway, right?
Dictation capabilities have been built into phones and computers for years. For example, here’s Apple’s docs for iPhone, iPad and Mac:
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/dictate-text-iph2c0651d2/ios
https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/dictate-text-ipad997d9642/ipados
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-dictation-mh40584/mac
Even when I still wrote with pen and paper, dictation didn’t interest me much as a way to get handwritten text into the computer. Now that I write directly on the computer for everything, dictation holds even less interest.
I suppose it comes down to how one creates sentences: by talking/verbalizing or by, well, writing, as with a pen or a keyboard.
One thing that probably takes some getting used to is how with dictation, the same tool — your voice — is used both for commands and for content (text), whereas with a keyboard, the commands are via the menu, mouse, arrow keys, etc., whereas anytime you’re using only the alphanumeric keys (with optional shift key), you’re entering content — a nice delineation.