Dictation ignores spaces after a pause

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Level 1

5 points

Dictation ignores spaces after a pause

Does anyone seem to have an update on the age-old problem of Mac’s Dictation feature processing every spoken pause by neglecting to enter a space between words/sentences and capitalizing the next word?

It seems like this problem has improved somewhat since the most recent OS update, but now the glitch manifests differently. It is quite infuriating accessibility problem, that makes Apple products considerably less accessible to those with different abilities than competitors such as Google and Microsoft.

So far, I find I am dictating in Apple software such as Notepad, Safari, etc., this problem does not seem to occur nearly as often. I also find that if I disable “Enhanced Dictation” this problem will crew slightly less, although I believe this is either because without “Enhanced Dictation” enabled, dictation data processes more slowly, allowing for these pauses, or the problem has been fixed Cloud-side, which may be where Dictation is processed when “Enhanced Dictation” is disabled.

I have worked around this problem by dictating into Notepade and copy-and-pasting into whatever program I’m using, but ultimately I have reverted to using non-native dictations (Google Dictation in Chrome and Dragon Dictation otherwise).

Are there any other workarounds that are being used that might be effective? We have a number of individuals with accessibility needs who might benefit from Mac products, which we cannot approve at this time because of Apple’s failure to resolve this glitch.

MacBook Pro 15”, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jun 11, 2019 8:22 AM

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Answer 1

VikingOSX

Level 10

128,312 points

Jun 11, 2019 1:48 PM in response to LukkasL

Dictation has these two sides, sort of like Janus. Both require a noise-free, proximity to a good microphone:

The round trip of your detected speech to Apple servers that perform the more accurate interpretation, and returned text that goes into your document.
The local speech detection and interpretation using Enhanced Dictation, which though less accurate, avoids network delays to your speech processing and text presentation.

Dictation is an impatient animal and if you pause for too long (e.g. 5+ seconds), it may think the sentence has come to an end, despite not hearing a spoken "period," or "full stop." It will then dutifully capitalize the next word as it proceeds with the next spoken sequence.

The solution when you come to a premature end of content, and pause, is to immediately say "lowercase" and when you continue, the next word and subsequent words are not capitalized. End that sentence with "full stop." If you find yourself paused without stating lowercase, and the next word capitalizes itself, you can say "select previous, lowercase that."

It is useful, when the Dictation agent stops pulsing its three globes, and begins to listen, to speak "Show commands." This will pop a panel with common command syntax.

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

251,399 points

Jun 11, 2019 8:35 AM in response to LukkasL

Have a look at Activity Monitor tosee CPU usage & such.

EtreCheck is a simple little app to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac.

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Pastebin is a good place to paste the whole report...

https://pastebin.com/

Workable but harder for me to work with...the Note tool on the bottom of this editor's toolbar, as shown in the image, to copy and paste the output from EtreCheck.

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Dictation ignores spaces after a pause

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