I am doing a ‘run-down’ on all types of writing software and assistance tools, so check out the article soon to be >here<. But over all I am looking at the tools we writers need. One of the tools I hear a lot about is Speech to Text. (Not to be confused with Text to Speech; which is a completely different program) It is also known as ‘Dictation software’.

Today I am talking about the built in Speech-to-Text functionality that comes installed with the general Microsoft Office products and Dragon Naturally Speaking by a company named Nuance.

Just to clarify, Speech-to-text is voice recognition software is where you talk into a computer microphone of some kind and your words are transcribed into a word document. The software boasts many functions, but this one is primary for the writers of the world. Can you imagine the day when you TELL the computer what to write, at 120 words per minute, and you finish a novel in under a week? That time is near…

Now, I have been contemplating getting a copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking by Nuance. Nuance is said to be the leader in voice recognition software and from all the hype, I would have to say I am fairly hyped about it as well.

To get my dictation feet wet, so to speak, I have been toying around with the Speech-to-Text functionality of the Microsoft Office programs. The voice commands seem to be the same between the software but I find them completely different when it comes to actual performance.

Honestly, I don’t know how anyone gets voice recognition software to work using speech to text of it is not Dragon Naturally Speaking. I have tried for some time to get the program in Microsoft Word to work and now I am just typing it by hand. Some things are just better the old fashioned way, I guess.

Will I give Dragon Naturally Speaking a chance? Yes. Why? Because I get a student discount on it so it doesn’t feel like I would be so ripped off if it turns out to work just as badly as Microsoft’s version.

Would I recommend trying to utilize the Speech-to-Text function built into Word? No, not particularly. I spent 6 hours trying to train the program and it has about a 60% success rate with general words. That is a whole lot of time to spend frustrated.

Could this make your life easier? I think it will be a different pony show utilizing Dragon Naturally Speaking now that I have exposed myself to the horror of the included Microsoft functionality that comes with my regular Microsoft programs.

(If you want to utilize the Speech-to-Text function in Microsoft word, go to: Tool>Speech> and when you get a pop up that you don’t have the file/installation downloaded, you just click the ‘Yes’ button to state you want to download it.)

I think it will be a pain to go through the training with Dragon Naturally Speaking all over again after spending so much time with the Microsoft Training and getting no where, but I have a feeling that since Nuance specializes in Voice Recognition, it is probably very good at it. I only say that because Microsoft has a lot of programs to maintain where Nuance really just has the voice recognition. It makes since that Nuance would make sure their program was outstanding.

So, I have given the built in functionality of the Microsoft Word Speech-to-Text program a chance and it has failed me. Next, we will be looking into how the Dragon Naturally Speaking program does in comparison and if speech recognition software is software to go with now, or a thing of the future.

Either way, that elusive one-week-novel-without-typing-a-single-word is a heck of a fantasy. If only…

Thanks for reading!