Dictation software

Dictation software is a program that listens to your speech, recognizes the words and types them into whichever app has the cursor. Say "Please send the invoice by Friday" and the words appear in your email, document or notes. Vendors also call it speech-to-text software, voice recognition software or voice dictation software. The names are used loosely, so read what a product actually does before you buy.

The word itself has a long history in dictionaries. The Cambridge Business English Dictionary describes dictation as speaking aloud for a person or a machine to record, so the words can be written down ¹. Dictation software is the machine case of that definition. It usually writes the words as you speak them, not after a recording is finished.

Dictation software recognizes speech, then inserts text

The software captures sound from a microphone, runs a speech recognition model on it and places the resulting text into the active field. Some products add a second step after recognition, in which a language model edits the text. That is covered by the entry on AI dictation.

Early dictation needed pauses, and current software does not

Dragon Systems unveiled NaturallySpeaking in April 1997 as the first general-purpose, large-vocabulary continuous speech recognition product ². Before that, dictation products had small vocabularies or made users pause between words. Continuous recognition is why current tools let you speak in full sentences.

Punctuation is part of the job

Good dictation software also handles punctuation and layout. Microsoft's English command table for Dictate in Word lists period, comma, question mark, exclamation mark and new line as spoken punctuation or formatting ³. Saying "Thanks for the notes comma I will send the draft tomorrow period" should therefore produce "Thanks for the notes, I will send the draft tomorrow." The example is illustrative: the exact output depends on the app and its settings.

Dictation software can be faster than typing, with limits

In a controlled study on an iPhone, English text entered by speech reached 153 words per minute, against 52 words per minute on the built-in keyboard ⁴. The study used short phrases read in a quiet room, and its speed counted the finished text, including corrections. It did not measure long documents.

Editing takes real time, so plan to read and fix a dictated draft, especially names and numbers.

The main kinds differ in where audio goes and what they add

• Built-in tools come with the operating system, so there is nothing extra to buy. The free tier entry explains what they include.
• Cloud dictation sends audio to a server for recognition.
• AI dictation adds a language model that edits the text.
• Custom vocabulary lets you teach the software names and jargon.
• Free tiers and paid plans differ in limits, modes and features.

For a full comparison, read what dictation software is and the types it comes in and the best dictation software, compared by need. Our overview of dictation software links every guide on the subject. For the difference between writing live and converting a recording, see dictation versus transcription, and for setup, see how to turn on voice typing.