Google Added Voice Commands to Google Docs

BEACON TRANSCRIPT – Forget about Cortana or Dragon NaturallySpeaking, because there’s now a much easier way to commit your thoughts to paper. Recently, Google added voice commands to Google Docs, thus transforming the online app in a very powerful doc-editing tool.

Ever get tired of mashing your computer keyboard in order to finish your essay or your work reports? Then give the keyboard a rest and buy yourself a microphone, because you will not be able to tell the computer what to write.

Indeed, Google has big plans for the Google Docs project. Apart from being free and quite good, the online doc-editing platform now supports voice commands and dictation. Moreover, Google made sure that the speech-to-text-engine used to power up Google Docs is good enough to understand each and every word, even when you’re mumbling.

In order to access this nifty new function, head on over to the Tools section and click on the Voice Typing section. As we might expect, it takes a while until the speech-to-text engine gets used to the user. This means that before you can use STT engine, you will have to go over the basics with the robot.

Usually, this means reading some texts aloud or to give the computer some basic voice commands like “open”, “edit” or “start”. Note that this process is not redundant. The more time you spend speaking to your computer, the better is can recognize the words you utter. And this is a good thing in terms of dictation.

You will see that once you turn on the feature, the process will be quite sluggish, meaning that the engine will take its sweet time to write a word and even a sentence.

In terms of features, the SST engine supported by Google Docs has a wide variety of voice commands, including those referring to text editing. For instance, the user can instruct the computer to move the cursor to the end of the sentence or to highlight a specific word or a whole sentence.

The engine also supports select commands, such as select the last word or select the next word. Among other commands included in the voice recognition software are “copy”, “paste”, “cut”, “delete the last word” or “insert equation”.

Google added voice commands to Google Docs in order to simplify the whole writing process. Moreover, the newly improved voice service can benefit people with eyesight impairments or other people who suffered from neuromuscular damage.

But remember: before starting a new document, be sure to buy an HQ microphone and to have a few friendly chats with your computer.

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