Additional Training for Accuracy

Personalizing Your Vocabulary

Personalizing your vocabulary involves two functions. The first is vocabulary editing, which lets you add words to the Dragon Professional Individual vocabulary and, optionally, train Dragon Professional Individual in how you say those words. It also lets you add custom phrases that translate into text. For example, you can say, “My Address,” and Dragon Professional Individual types your address. The second function is vocabulary building, which uses documents and emails to build your existing vocabulary. I cover both of those in the following sections.

Vocabulary editing

You can directly add words to the Dragon Professional Individual active vocabulary. The Vocabulary Editor is your tool to add or delete any word you have added but no longer use. It also has special features that allow you to do any of the following:

Train Dragon Professional Individual in your own, personal pronunciation of a word, for better recognition.
Add special words or phrases to the vocabulary, like your company name, properly capitalized or hyphenated, or jargon that you use in your profession.
Give awkward words or phrases a different “spoken form” to make dictation easier, like saying, “My Email” for voiceguy@yourcompany.com. These are called shortcuts.
Come up with alternative ways to say words, punctuation, or whitespace characters, like saying, “Full Stop” for a period.

Although I talk about mouse commands here, you can use voice commands to control the Vocabulary Editor, too.

Adding a new word or phrase

Adding a word tells Dragon Professional Individual that you want to include something new to its vocabulary. The accompanying Word training also teaches Dragon Professional Individual how you say a word.

No matter whether you say the word bear as “beer,” “beyah,” or “bayrrr,” word training can tune Dragon Professional Individual’s ear to your pronunciation. If Dragon Professional Individual is having trouble recognizing specific words, word training may be your solution. Word training is most helpful when your pronunciation of a word is unique or not at all like its spelling. For example, in New York, Houston Street is pronounced “Houseton.” In Texas, it’s pronounced “Hueston.”

To add a new word or phrase, from the Accuracy Center click Add a New Word or Phrase. Up pops the Add Word or Phrase box, as shown in Figure 17-2.

Figure 17-2: Use the Add Word or Phrase box to add new words or phrases.

You can train words without going to the Accuracy Center, too. Just say, “Select <word or words>” to select a word in your document, and when the Correction menu comes up, say, “Add That to Vocabulary” and the same dialog box appears. Note the option will be grayed out if the word is already in your vocabulary.

To add words, follow these steps:

Spell or type the word you want to add in the left prompt box.
In the right prompt box, type or spell the spoken form of the word.

Dragon Professional Individual uses a pronunciation guesser to figure out how most terms sound from the spelling. However, lots of jargon, acronyms, and other terms don’t conform to standard rules of English pronunciation. Sometimes you can type a spoken form that gives Dragon Professional Individual something better to guess from.

But whether you enter a written and spoken form or just a written form, if the pronunciation you’re going to use isn’t obvious from the spelling, you should train Dragon Professional Individual in how you pronounce the word. That’s why you see a check box that lets you choose to train the pronunciation of the word or phrase. You can use the word training feature to make sure Dragon Professional Individual recognizes your word or phrase.

For example, you may want Dragon Professional Individual to write “Boston and Maine Railroad” when you speak the phrase “B&M.” Enter the written form Boston and Maine Railroad and the spoken form B and M or it could be bee and em for example.
After you type in the word or phrase, click OK.

The Train Words dialog box displays in large type the spoken form of the term (or the written form if you haven’t entered a spoken form), as shown in Figure 17-3. I chose to train the word “prewash.”
Click Go.

Speak the phrase into your microphone exactly as you always say it.
Click the Done button after you’ve spoken the term.

Figure 17-3: Training words in the Train Words dialog box.

What if word training isn’t enough? Perhaps you speak your newly trained word, and Dragon Professional Individual still gets it wrong. If two terms sound alike, Dragon Professional Individual chooses one by looking at how you have used the term in the past, in context.

If you have recently added this term (say, in the Vocabulary Editor), Dragon Professional Individual has little or no context for the term. You haven’t used it in a phrase, so Dragon Professional Individual is more likely to choose the term with which it has more experience. The solution is to dictate your new term in context and then correct Dragon Professional Individual with “Correct That” when it chooses the wrong term. If you dictate the new word and correct Dragon Professional Individual with the Correction dialog box, it will catch on and use the new term.

Adding shortcuts in the Vocabulary Editor

To add custom terms to the Dragon Professional Individual active vocabulary, click the Open the Vocabulary Editor link from the Accuracy Center (or you can launch the Vocabulary Editor by choosing Vocabulary ⇒ Open Vocabulary Editor from the DragonBar menu or speak the commands). Then follow these steps:

Enter the term in the Search For box at the top of the Vocabulary Editor.

In Figure 17-4, for example, I entered an email address, info@SavvyExecutiveInstitute.com.

To see what’s in the vocabulary, you can either scroll the list in the Vocabulary Editor or type the term in the Search For box. As you type, the list scrolls to match your typing.

If you want to speak something other than what’s typed, first add the word by clicking Add. In the Add New Word or Phrase dialog box that appears, enter the way you want to say the word in the text box labeled Spoken Form (If Different). For example, if I enter My Email there, I can simply say, “My Email” and have Dragon Professional Individual type dragon@gurus.com. If you use a term in the Spoken Form box that Dragon Professional Individual doesn’t already have in its vocabulary, a dialog box lets you know that fact. It also asks whether you want it to assign an approximate pronunciation. Click OK.
After you enter a written (and, if different, spoken) form of the term, click the Add button.

If you think the pronunciation will be difficult, select the I Want to Train check box before clicking the Add button and record the word as directed. The Vocabulary Editor adds the term to the vocabulary list and marks it with a plus sign (+). You can delete any custom term you add. Just click the term, and then click the Delete button. You can also select multiple terms to delete by holding down the Ctrl button as you click.
Click the Close button.

Figure 17-4: Email address typed into the Vocabulary Editor.

Creating different ways to say the same thing

The period at the end of this sentence has more aliases (alternative names) than most criminals. The words period, decimal point, dot, point, stop, and full stop are all valid names for that same symbol in different contexts. Dragon Professional Individual doesn’t currently recognize all those alternative spoken names, but you can add them to the vocabulary.

If you have an alternative spoken name you would like to use for a word, phrase, or symbol, use the Vocabulary Editor to add that name. Unfortunately, you can’t change any of the existing names, even if you don’t like them. You can only add an alternative.

To add aliases, whether for symbols, numbers, or other terms, launch the Vocabulary Editor (choose Vocabulary ⇒ Open Vocabulary Editor) and then do the following:

Type the term or symbol that needs an alias in the Search For text box.

The list scrolls to show the current written and spoken forms.

To see all the currently defined symbols and dictation commands in the Vocabulary Editor, you must scroll up above the terms beginning with “a.”
Click the Add button.

The Add New Word or Phrase dialog box appears.
Type a new term in the Spoken Form box, and then click the Add button.

A second copy of the word appears in the vocabulary list, with your new alias and a plus sign (+) to mark the alias as a custom term. (If the alias doesn’t work out, you can delete it. Just click the line and then click the Delete button.)

When you change the spelling of a word, the new word does not have the same context data assigned to it as the original — which can be good or bad. For example, if you add a new version of the word center spelled centre, Dragon loses the context data that tells it what words appear near it. To have alternate written forms of words, you should change the properties of existing words by choosing DragonBar ⇒ Vocabulary ⇒ Open Vocabulary Editor, select the word center, and then click the Properties button.

Import a list of words or phrases

If you’re likely to use terms from some specialized vocabulary in the documents you dictate, you can make a list of such terms and give them all to Dragon Professional Individual in one fell swoop. For example, Queen’s Gambit Declined is the name of a chess opening. Each of the three words is surely already in the Dragon Professional Individual General English vocabulary, but Dragon Professional Individual doesn’t know that these three words have a special capitalization pattern when they appear together. If you were to dictate documents about chess, you would want to include Queen’s Gambit Declined on one line of your list.

You can create a list and use the Import List of Words or Phrases box, as shown in Figure 17-5.

Figure 17-5: The Import List of Words or Phrases box.

Follow these steps:

Create a text file in which each line is the written form of a vocabulary entry you want to add.
At the end of any line where you want a different spoken form, add a backslash (/) and then the shorthand alias you want to speak.
From the Accuracy Center, click the Import a List of Words or Phrases link or use the mouse or commands, and from the DragonBar go to Vocabulary ⇒ Import List of Words or Phrases.

A screen pops up with the words “Import List of Words or Phrases.” You also see the option to “Preview the list of unknown words.” If you wish to do that, select the box.
Click Next.

You are asked to add the file.
Click the Add File button.

The file is analyzed.
Click Finish.

A Summary box shows you how many words were added to your vocabulary.

A few wise ideas can save you time and trouble while adding words by using the Import method:

Review the list of words to make sure they are real words that you really want.
Don’t add words that you use infrequently. This is especially true if they sound like some other word that you use often.
Sometimes individual proper nouns that you want from a document are actually common words, except that their capitalization (or lack of capitalization) makes them special for you — a sports team named Bingo, for example, or an Internet domain that uses a person’s name.

Learning from specific documents

At this step, you provide your Dragon Professional Individual assistant with documents so that it can look at them and pick out any words or capitalized phrases it doesn’t recognize. (In essence, it’s automatically building a list like the one you may have provided, as the preceding section describes.) The more documents you give the vocabulary building function, the better. In particular, give it documents that resemble the documents you want to dictate — your previous best-seller, for example, or a collection of your office memos.

Giving the Vocabulary Builder documents that resemble other documents is a great way for Dragon to add words and learn when you use those words — which updates your language model. Dragon looks at words before and after every word you say and uses context knowledge about how certain words are used. This increases accuracy and helps Dragon tell the difference between words like ice cream and I scream. It is also a good idea to run the Vocabulary Builder on documents that have words Dragon does not know. In this way, you are adding words to the vocabulary and teaching Dragon when and how you use those words.

Spell-check the documents before you analyze them. The vocabulary-building function looks for words it doesn’t already know, and it thinks it has found one whenever it runs into a misspelled word. You save yourself some time if you spell-check your documents and correct any misspelled words before giving the documents to Vocabulary Builder.

To add words from specific documents in Word, WordPerfect, plain text, RTF (Rich Text Format), and HTML (web) documents, follow these steps:

From the Accuracy Center, click the Learn from Specific Documents link or choose Vocabulary ⇒ Learn from Specific Documents from the DragonBar.

A Learn from Specific Documents screen pops up, as shown in Figure 17-6. On this screen, you have the option to Find Unknown Words (in various forms) or Adapt to Writing Style.
Select the check box next to each option you want to add and then click Next.

A new screen appears with buttons to add either folders of documents or single documents to analyze.
Click the buttons to add your files.

Your Windows Browse window opens, allowing you to choose the files as you normally do. Next, the files show up in the window of the Learn from Specific Documents screen.
Click Next.

Your documents are analyzed. A check mark appears next to the names of the documents analyzed. All the words that were new to your vocabulary are shown with check marks and the frequency with which they occurred.
If you want to add all the words on the list, click Next.

You see a list of the words, and the screen asks you to check the words you want to train.
Check the ones you think should be trained for pronunciation.

The Train Words dialog box displays, in large type, the written form of the term.
Click Go.

Speak the phrase into your microphone exactly as you always say it.
Click Next.

A Summary box shows you how many words were added to your vocabulary.
Click Finish.

Figure 17-6: Learn from Specific Documents screen.

Adding words from somebody else’s documents

Normally, you use your own documents to teach Dragon Professional Individual about your vocabulary. What can you do, however, for a subject that you have not written much about?

Answer: Grab words from documents other people have written. The web, for example, is full of documents about nearly any subject you can name. The trick is to have Dragon Professional Individual pick up on the words, but not the writing style, of this other author (unless you intend to write just like him or her).

To use someone else’s documents, first you must get the documents! Dragon Professional Individual can read Microsoft Word or WordPerfect documents if you have Word or WordPerfect installed. It can also read plain text, RTF, and HTML documents. To get documents from the web, browse to the page you want, and then save the page as an HTML file. In Internet Explorer, for example, choose File ⇒ Save As, enter a filename in the dialog box that appears, and click Save.

Use these documents in the Add Words from Documents box as you would any other documents. When you get to the Adapt to Writing Style check box, deselect it so your Dragon Professional Individual assistant won’t assume that you write like that other writer.

Learning from sent emails

Analyzing emails is another way for your Dragon Professional Individual assistant to build your vocabulary. This process helps in two ways. It learns from the style of your emails and it can automatically add email addresses you currently use. It works with Microsoft Outlook, Outlook.com, Lotus Notes, Gmail, Yahoo!, and Windows Live Mail.

From the Accuracy Center, click Learn from Sent Emails or go to Vocabulary ⇒ Learn from Sent Emails from the DragonBar. The Learn from Sent Emails Wizard appears, as shown in Figure 17-7.

Figure 17-7: The Learn from Sent Emails Wizard.

Follow these steps to complete the process:

Click Next.

Choose from the options presented by selecting the check boxes.
Click Next again.

The emails are analyzed.
Click Next one more time.

Any new words will be displayed for you to train (see the section “Learning from specific documents,” earlier in this chapter).
Click Finish.

Adjusting Your Acoustics

The Accuracy Center provides three ways to help your Dragon Professional Individual assistant improve your acoustics. They are as follows:

Checking your microphone
Launching Accuracy Tuning
Reading text to train Dragon to your voice

I discuss these in the following sections.

Checking your microphone

Obviously, the microphone is an all-important part of your software. Make sure your Dragon Professional Individual assistant doesn’t have a “hearing” problem. Does Dragon Professional Individual make errors on lots of words and phrases, not just a specific few? Your problem could be with speaking unclearly, with your microphone position or quality, with your sound card quality, or with the microphone volume set by Dragon, as shown in Figure 17-9.

Figure 17-9: The Microphone Volume setting.

To rule out a hearing problem, rerun the microphone check from the Check Microphone link in the Accuracy Center. You can also access it from the Audio ⇒ Check Microphone menu option on the DragonBar. If Dragon thinks your audio is fine, and you still get errors on lots of words after running the microphone check, try the voice tips in Chapter 16. If all else fails, you can reset your audio by choosing Audio ⇒ Reset Audio Calibration. You may want to try checking the microphone and doing more training before going that route though because you lose all your audio training to date.

Launching Accuracy Tuning

Here’s where the correction and fine-tuning of your dictation really pay off. From the Launch Accuracy Tuning Now link in the Accuracy Center (or from Audio ⇒ Launch Accuracy Tuning), you’ll be presented with the Acoustic and Language Model Optimizer screen. Don’t be intimidated. Your Dragon Professional Individual assistant does all the heavy lifting.

As shown in Figure 17-10, the Perform Acoustic Optimization and Perform Language Model Optimization check boxes are selected by default. Leave them selected, then do the following:

Click Go.

You are given an estimated time for completion of this process. Don’t be shocked if the initial estimate says 450 hours! It quickly changes to a couple of minutes while it’s working. Perhaps your Dragon Professional Individual assistant has a weird sense of humor.
After the process completes, click Done.

You’ll be asked to save the newly optimized files.
Click Yes and you’re done.

Figure 17-10: The Acoustic and Language Model Optimizer screen.

See? Your Dragon Professional Individual assistant does all the work. (Isn’t that why you pay it the big bucks?)

Reading text to train Dragon to your voice

If Dragon Professional Individual seems to be making more mistakes than it used to, ask yourself if you have changed since you first trained Dragon. Has your voice, manner of speaking, or working environment changed?

For example, are you getting more experienced at dictation? Have you changed your office or changed something that makes or absorbs sound in your office? If so, try running the Training Wizard. (To access it, go to the DragonBar menu and choose Audio ⇒ Read Text to Improve Accuracy.) Training helps Dragon Professional Individual get a more accurate picture of your voice and speech habits.

Running the Training Wizard after you’ve had some experience with Dragon Professional Individual is a good idea. Often, you speak differently after a few days.

The plan for training is to read something to Dragon Professional Individual so that it can figure out how you speak.

A fundamental problem with training is that many people read differently than they dictate. Try to speak the way you would if you were the author and were thinking this stuff up for the first time.

Don’t say, “Cap” or any other dictation commands during training. Don’t say any punctuation, either. Don’t go back and reread something you think you read wrong. Just push forward and keep moving. It might be easier to print the story out, hold it, and read from there.