sierra dictation

I read your original post. There are no settings beyond enabling enhanced dictation to explain it continuing to type content, rather than obey your bold request. On my Mac, it doesn't even require a punctuation mark to back-track and bold the spoken word.

In what application are you dictating, and does this occur in other applications?

I recommend rebooting your Mac into Safe Boot mode, trying dictation again, rebooting normally, and again trying dictation to see if this process cleared up the dictation gremlin.

“See spot run period”

See Spot run.

“bold spot”

See Spot run.

The above is what it does on my El Capitan 10.11.6, and High Sierra 10.13.4 systems. No special settings, and nothing enabled in the System Preferences : Accessibility panel. Are you running any anti-virus or so-called mac clearner products?

I provided you a link to instructions for Safe Boot mode on May 28. It clears out System caches, rebuilds the font database, rebuilds other databases, and runs the equivalent of Disk First Aid on your boot drive. Your data is safe.

Power off the Mac. Power it back on, and when you hear the boot chime, just press and hold the shift key until you see the white boot progress bar. You will be greeted by a login window, and you will know you are in Safe Boot mode because Safe Boot will appear in the upper right corner.

When you boot into Safe Boot mode, it will be slower, and you may experience temporary screen aberrations — but this is normal. Try dictation again, to see if it finally obeys you. It may not. Reboot normally, and try dictation again.

I have Enhanced Dictation enabled on macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 installed on a 2014 MacBook Air.

Once you have the Dictation icon on your Desktop, and the three pulsing dots have stopped, simply state “show commands.” On that panel, under Formatting are the terms, “bold that,” “italicize that,” and “underline that.” These are verbal toggles, so if you want undo the effect, you state it again.

For instance, I have just dictated, “See spot run full stop” which produces “See Spot run.” If I wanted to just bold Spot, I can state “bold spot,” and dictation is smart enough to find Spot in the last dictated text and bold it (or unbold it).

It turns out that a punctuation mark is not necessary for dictation to remember a previous, nearby word, and apply the bold instruction. I discovered that yesterday afternoon out of curiosity.

See Spot run <bold spot> becomes See Spot run .

Did you perform the Safe Boot process, and is dictation now correctly functional?

It never has for me across multiple versions of OS X and macOS.

As a matter of course, you should have Time Machine operational, and an appropriately sized external drive receiving regular backups while your Mac is booted. I do.

Are you waiting long enough?

If I dictate "see spot run bold spot" with no or little hesitation between "run" and "bold" I will get "See Spot run bold spot."

But if I wait after "run" for the dictation to place the text in the document, and then say "bold spot" I will get "See Spot run."

So, try: "See spot run" then wait for it to appear.

Then: "bold spot"

Hi Cindy ..

Might be something in this Apple support article to help you > macOS Sierra: Use the dictation keyword phrase and menu

Any improvement after the Safe Boot process?