Hacks to get Dictation to spell names correctly

[Will Kicking It Help?]

In the Contacts app, I discovered that I can put, not just a person's name, but a street name, a business name, or even just a word or term, that Dictation is relentless about misspelling into a "card," and it will save it without my having to fake in an email address or any other actual contact info, after which the spelling will be perfect…

… EXCEPT for certain pronunciation issues. For a non-standard spelling of a name; buried down in the More Fields sub-menu at the bottom of the menu that drops down from the + at the bottom of a card, there's a way to input phonetics for a name. This works beautifully…

… EXCEPT if there is an ampersand (&) in there, in which case... So far, nothing works. There are surprising # of businesses and websites that have an ampersand in their name, and there's just GOT to be a better way to handle them in Dictation than having to go back and paste in the correct spelling and formatting and capitalization of the name every single time. I'd be very grateful for any ideas!

 

[DeltaMac]

hmm... Don't you get an ampersand when you say "ampersand" (dictation should respond with &, if you say ampersand, right?)
Are you saying the dictation does not accept if you have a company named "Black & Thomas" (for example), but if you SAY "capitalize Black ampersand capitalize Thomas", then that is not what is entered in the card? (obviously, you can't just say "Black and Thomas", as you would get black and thomas.

I don't know if you have ever looked at it, but macOS has a lot of hints about using dictation, and the dictation commands that you can speak, in the macOS User Guide, which you can access by clicking the "?" on the Keyboard/Dictation tab, in your System preferences.

 

[Will Kicking It Help?]

No, I do NOT get an ampersand when I say "ampersand," most of the time, although of course that's what I SHOULD be getting.

If I say "caps on Black ampersand Thomas caps off"... which is what you do so you don't have to say "capitalize" before every word… I get Black and Sand Thomas or Black's Can Thomas, or if I'm very lucky, Black& Thomas; all sorts of weird spelling and grammatical garblings.

This is the reason for my attempting to use the hack to get names of this nature to be spelled correctly, and the failure of that hack is the reason for asking this question.

The hints unfortunately do not offer any suggestions for correcting this or any of the other problems with Dictation. Do YOU have any ideas?

 

[Ruggy]

I get ampersand when I say ampersand. Just checked to make sure. Worked every time so far.

 

[Slartibart]

same here. The example “Black & Thomas” gets the capital “B” and “T” automatically.

 

[DeltaMac]

Hints appear to say that there may need to be some separation/pause between words and commands when dictating. I wonder if you tried taking more time - word to command to word?

 

[Will Kicking It Help?]

Hints appear to say that there may need to be some separation/pause between words and commands when dictating. I wonder if you tried taking more time - word to command to word?

That's certainly a thought, I dictate big chunks pretty rapidly… I'm not going to necessarily remember to be breaking my stream of thought to do those pauses, but I'll try doing it when I DO remember, and see what happens. This might also explain why people who are just trying to dictate one phrase are getting ampersands correctly, because they're not saying it is part of a big chunk of rapidly dictated stuff. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[Slartibart]

Well, in the Contacts app there isn’t the need to dictate big chunks, isn’t it? 😀 But I checked dictating a larger text corpus - my personal “dictatation speed & pronunciation“ equals the speed I use to read to my nephews - and then it works quite well… apart from the occasional “10%” instead of “&” when I speak “away” from the mic.

My main grievance with Apple’s dictation is that there seems to be no command to indicate that the next word should be written and not automatically converted (if it‘s part of the commands) - something like MS’s implementation using “literal”, so “literal Ampersand” gives you “Ampersand”.