The Writer's Guide to Training Your Dragon: Using Speech Recognition Software to Dictate Your Book and Supercharge Your Writing Workflow (Dictation Mastery for PC and Mac)

I have been playing around with Dragon Naturally Speaking for about 20 years. Yes, "playing around" is a fairly accurate description of the relationship that I have had with the Dragon. It's been a frustrating "on again - off again" experience. Up until recent years, affordable hardware was just not good enough to support Dragon's needs. Well, that is what I thought.This book presented a paradigm shift in what to expect from Dragon. The author provided two key points that I had never really considered regarding how to use Dragon. First, his advice to writers is to focus on getting the draft written. It's about word count and not formatting. Second, unless you have physical limitations that require you to use Dragon to control your computer keep the use of commands to the absolute minimum. Again, this is about writers and the need to focus on getting their drafts written.The author recommends not even using the DragonPad for dictation. He explains that using a basic text editor like the Windows Notepad works better for dictating a draft as it does not allow formatting. Thus, Dragon will focus on creating words from the dictation and not get confused with formatting commands. This is a great approach.The author provides tips on how to work-around Dragon's problems regarding special or hard to pronounce words. For example: use a simple word to describe a difficult name or phrase and then use search and replace to fix things up during the editing period of the draft.Regarding editing of the draft, the author recommends not using Dragon at all. Instead, he recommends using the standard keyboard and mouse approach to clean up the draft.The author, also, provides some nice insight into how to expand the time that you can dictate by using either your smartphone or dictaphone. Again, this is where technology is finally capable of enough to support transcription by Dragon. I haven't tried this yet, but I am definitely looking forward to giving this a try.All in all, while the book is short, it does provide some great information to get started on the right foot with Dragon or help you develop a reasonable expectation about Dragon's capabilities. BTW, he covers both the Windows and Mac versions about what works and doesn't and any differences in how to use on the two platforms.I found this book quite helpful and highly recommend it to those who want to get their words captured into text without having to type them.

I've used speech recognition software for years. Back in the 1990s, I used IBM's Via Voice. Then, I found greater accuracy with Microsoft's free speech recognition software (it's inside Windows). In the past year, I've switched to Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but -- until I read this book and followed Baker's advice -- I still felt that dictating books was a really s-l-o-w way to write a book. (Nevertheless, when a recent case of tennis elbow made typing difficult for a few weeks, I had no other option.)Yesterday afternoon, I read "The Writer's Guide to Training Your Dragon...," and immediately went to work, following his advice. I set up my microphone and added a new Dragon profile, exactly the way he said. I followed his dictation tips, and -- wow! -- my writing speed doubled on the first try.This is important: Following his advice, I had to make only three corrections in over 800 words of dictation. (I'm writing something historical, so some of the words aren't in Dragon's dictionary.) That's impressive.Baker's advice took the stress and frustration out of using speech recognition software. I'm no longer distracted by the errors, so I can write better, faster, and more fluidly.I'm grateful to Scott Baker for sharing so many helpful tips. The quality of my writing improved, overnight, and my output has doubled on the first try.

The book was very interesting, but I expected to see more about the program than was in the book. From the content of the book, it is written mostly for article/book writers and gives a lot of insight into what you need to do as a writer and how this program (Dragon) will help you to save time and achieve great results. I am not a great writer, but the book did help me see what needs to be done to use the program to be one.

I followed the book's unorthodox directions for setting up a new Dragon profile, as well as for setting up my microphone (a $40 USB desktop mic) for dictation, and a $50 Sony PX 370 digital voice recorder for transcription. I was able to belt out 2,000 words in about 20 minutes with the microphone and almost the same speed with the digital voice recorder. Amazingly, I got above 99% accuracy with both the dictation and the transcription. This book is a gem, because before reading this, I had about an 80-85% accuracy, which made it almost not worth doing. It is incredible how the little gems of wisdom in this book made dictation more accurate than typing! And 2,000 words in 20 minutes... that's a persona record, and kind of insane. BUY THIS BOOK.

Dictation is not natural. It's dang difficult to master. The book is helpful for getting beyond that.I liked the emphasis on the absolute necessity of a high quality cardiod mic. The author is a book dictating author and has years of experience in his bag of tricks. The mic's discussed are in the >$100's. It's a matter of GIGO fidelity.Dictation process repeatability is the major focus. The importance of specific mic position, speech cadence and voice pattern AI learning begins to make sense. It all helps from the beginning.On the other hand, the book has not been specifically updated for new releases other than a word here and there that is not operationally helpful. It's generic Dragon dictation.The books construct reveals an original book designed to be author easy edited and re-issued to now Dragon 15. A deep dive into the nuances of the revisions is mention only.The value of the book is in helping the user develop dictation methodology. To uncover current revision nuances, look elsewhere.Very quick read. Helpful.

Anticipada más información de cómo se usanV vrias características del programa. Por ejemplo, como enseñar al programa de vocabulario único.

He goes over everything you'd need to get the job done and get it done well when it comes to using Dragon.

This book was what eventually convinced me to try Dragon. I'm a slow writer, sitting at 20-30 wpm, so the speed gain alone is worth it. Walking outside with a dictaphone is also great for me, as I, too, suffer from the damage a disc herniation caused some years ago.This book was a great guide, helped me decide to get a dictaphone and, to be honest, made the whole undertaking less is intimidating.

... für alle, die mit dem Diktieren anfangen wollen. Die Ratschläge zur Hard- und Software haben Hand und Fuß, die Tipps zum "Drachentraining" ebenfalls. Wer sich mit der Idee trägt, in Zukunft mehr zu diktieren als zu schreiben (was sehr hand- und rückenfreundlich ist!), sollte sich diesen Ratgeber unbedingt vor dem Kauf von Soft- und Hardware zulegen. Damit vermeidet man Fehlkäufe und auch falsches "Training" des Spracherkennungsprogramms.Fazit: Sehr lesenswert!

Great book! Everyone who just bought Dragon should read it. You will avoid many hours of frustration by using Dragon well, right from the start. A must read!