This video tutorial demonstrates how to select text by voice commands to copy, move and paste it to a different location. It also shows how to add character and paragraph styles using voice commands.

Transcript of the video

In this tutorial we’ll be talking about working with text with Dual Writer. So we’ll start by dictating a sentence.

“Now’s the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.”
Stop listening

This is a good example of dictation being easier than typing. This is a common sentence that all typing students have to type again and again, but it’s really easy to dictate. Now we’ll perform some commands with copy and paste. It’s much easier for the system to understand multiple words, and so when you want to copy or paste, say “copy that” and “paste that.”

start listening
select “good”
copy that
go ahead 8 words
go to the next word
go to the next word
paste that space
stop listening

OK, so now we selected the word “good,” we copied it and we moved it to the end. So now we have “come to the aid of their good country,” but maybe we didn’t want it there. So we can just delete it.

start listening
delete “good”
stop listening

You can delete words and phrases without first selecting them, however when we’re doing word processing, it’s standard that you select something first and then perform a command. If you just say “delete something,” it’s not always easy to see what just happened. If you select first, then you know what’s going to happen before you say the delete command. So that is the recommended way to do it, even though it is an additional step.

start listening
undo that
select “good”
deselect that
select the word
delete that
stop listening

So that is the preferred method for deleting. You can also capitalize text with the speech commands. With Dual Writer you can say “cap that,” “all cap that” and “no cap that.” They are a little bit different from each other.

start listening
select the sentence
no cap that
select the sentence
all cap that
select the sentence
no cap that
stop listening

With capitalization it’s also not necessary to select first. If you want to, you can just say “cap the sentence,” and the sentence will be capped without first selecting it.

start listening
cap the sentence
stop listening

So that’s the easy way to capitalize without selecting first.

With Dual Writer you can also perform formatting commands for characters and paragraphs. And again they use the word “that.”

start listening
select “time”
bold that
underline that
stop listening

You can see that by saying “bold that” and “underline that,” the selected text is formatted. To undo the formatting, say the same command again.

start listening
bold that
underline that
stop listening

You can also change the font size.

start listening
select the sentence
grow font that
grow font that
shrink font that
shrink font that
stop listening

Paragraph formatting commands can also be said.

start listening
go to the start of the sentence
center that
align left that
align right that
align left that
stop listening

If you forget the formatting commands, it’s an easy thing to do to go to the Home Tab and just mouse over these commands. You can see that when you highlight Bold, it says in dictation mode “Say Bold That,” and “Say Underline that.” These all have dictation commands that you can use to do the formatting without touching the keyboard or the mouse.