How do I get my iPhone to type the word "Period" instead of the punctuation while dictating?
I love using my iPhone to dictate long emails, first drafts of documents, and such. It does such an amazing job and I can capture my thoughts quickly.
Unfortunately, a lot of the work I do is associated with accounting periods but however I say "period", it always puts the full-stop punctuation.
Is there a way to get it to actually spell out "period"? I end up having to use a word that will not be in the final text (penguin) and then do a search and replace at the end.
I have the perfect solution, and it goes as follows.
Create a new contact with the first name of what you want to be dictated, as you want it dictated exactly. (e.g. Contact first name "period" without the quotes.)
Down at the bottom select add new field and add the phonetic first name field.
Go back up and type out the phrase you'd like associated with the word. I like to use the word "literal" space then the word. (e.g. "literal period")
Force quit all apps. and reopen the one you are using to dictate to.
make a new sentence and say the phrase "literal period" and you should now get the word "period" in the sentence instead of "."
To conclude, this works for EVERYTHING. Proper Names, fantasy/sci-fi content, technical terminology, etc.
You are so correct. Dictation around this is really bad and the algorithm seems highly skewed to always prefer punctuation.
- That movie was a very nice period piece.
- Even the period penguin trick is problematic. (although the idea of an accounting penguin makes me surprisingly happy)
- The periodic table of elements is often punctuated.
Reading any of these will get you lots of dots. Anecdotally, I feel my iPad Pro (the new one with the A12X) and the iPhoneX and newer have better dictation than any Mac or older iOS device, but reading the three sentences above - several times, slowly, in a low noise environment makes me think most people aren't going to be getting the word period when they want it while dictating in 2019.