How to dictate a document in Microsoft Word (and have an ergonomic break)

For those of us who use the keyboard for a lot of our work tasks – i.e writing research papers, reviewing research papers, writing proposals, typing lengthy emails; the Dictate function available in Word can assist in giving yourself a break from the keyboard work. Using the Dictate function is a quick and easy way to get your thoughts and ideas out, creating drafts or outlines and capturing notes without having to type them.

You can access the Dictate function by opening a new Word document; head to the Home tab and click on “Dictate”.

The microphone icon will appear in your document in blue – start talking and what you say will appear as text in the document. You can also say “Pause dictation” or ‘Stop dictation”. To start dictating again, click on the microphone icon. You will hear a quick beep whenever the function starts or stops listening to your voice.

Insert punctuation any time by saying them explicitly i.e., ‘comma’, ‘exclamation mark’, ‘open quotes’ and close quotes’.

Click on the gear icon to:

• Enable auto-punctuation
• Filter sensitive phrases
• Set the spoken language (where you can select the preferred language to dictate in)

If you need help with deciding which punctuation or symbols to use, making corrections, or controlling dictation, click the question mark icon next to the microphone to open the Help sidebar.