Dictation for work and study
Dictation for Work: Doctors, Lawyers, Writers, Students
Dictation pays off in any job that is mostly writing: in controlled tests speech is about three times faster than keyboard entry, so a draft takes a third of the time and the saving goes into editing. What differs by profession is everything around the words: who checks the draft, which vocabulary it must handle and which confidentiality rules apply. That chain is being rebuilt as AI scribes and on-device recognition replace dictating to a typist.
Updated October 16, 202619 min read68 cited facts, each traced to its source
153words per minute
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, 2.93 times faster.
Sherry Ruan et al., Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), 2018
12.7minutes saved per 1,000 words
At the study's 153 words per minute by speech and 52 on the keyboard, a 1,000-word draft takes about 6.5 minutes spoken and 19.2 minutes typed, a saving of about 12.7 minutes.
How it is calculated
1.8hours per hour of face time
In the 2016 time and motion study, 49.2 percent of the office day on EHR and desk work against 27.0 percent in face time works out at about 1.8 hours of EHR and desk work for every hour with patients.
How it is calculated
9.5%reduction in time-in-note versus control
Physicians who used Nabla cut their time-in-note by 9.5 percent compared with the control group, the only arm with a statistically significant reduction.
Lukac PJ et al., NEJM AI, 2025
Guides in this topic
Each guide takes one part of the subject in depth.
- Medical Dictation: Software, Devices and How It WorksMedical dictation turns a clinician's spoken notes into text for the patient record: a transcriptionist edits a speech draft, speech recognition types into the EHR as the clinician speaks, or an AI scribe drafts the note from the visit. Resellers quote Dragon Medical One at $79 to $99 per user per month, while the built-in Voice Control on a Mac accepts up to 1,000 custom vocabulary terms, so test any tool on your own clinical notes.
- Writing a Book by Dictation: Software and WorkflowYes, you can write a book by dictation. Planning limits the pace more than speaking does, so outline each scene, dictate one scene per session, and budget real time for the edit, because recognition errors are common enough to matter.
- How to Dictate Emails Faster Than You Type ThemDictation saves the most time on long email you have already planned: in a controlled study, English speech entry ran about 2.9 times faster than typing on a phone. Composing by speech from scratch is much slower, so speak a plan in three parts, then check names, numbers and addresses before you send.
- How Much Time Dictation Saves at WorkFor someone who types 10 hours of finished text a week, speech at measured speeds saves about 6.6 hours before editing, and about 5.8 hours once a quarter of the speaking time goes to correction. Your writing hours, your editing time and how much of the job is thinking decide the real figure.
- AI Medical Scribes and Ambient Clinical DocumentationAn ambient AI scribe listens to a clinical visit, transcribes the conversation and drafts the clinical note for the clinician to review and sign. The best trials so far show modest, product-dependent savings in note time, larger self-reported gains in burnout, and errors that clinicians must catch before they sign.
- Medical Transcription: The Job, the Pay and AIMedical transcription turns a clinician's recorded dictation into a formatted medical report. US projections show employment falling 4 percent from 2025 to 2035 as speech recognition drafts the first version, so the remaining work is mostly checking and correcting machine drafts. The median wage was $40,410 in May 2025.
- Legal Dictation Software for Lawyers and Law FirmsLawyers who draft alone use live dictation software, such as Dragon Legal, Microsoft Word Dictate or Apple Dictation, which types as they speak. A firm that sends recordings to an assistant or transcriptionist needs a digital dictation platform. In both cases, the firm's confidentiality duties decide where its audio may be processed.
- Legal Transcription: The Job, Formats and PayLegal transcription turns court proceedings, depositions and lawyers' dictation into exact text that follows a fixed format. Courts set the format and a maximum fee per page, while freelance pay comes from agencies and has no official schedule.
- Speech to Text for Students: Essays, Notes, HomeworkMost students already have free speech to text on a Chromebook, Windows PC, Mac, iPhone or in Google Docs, and using it for your own words is not cheating. Small studies found students with learning disabilities wrote better essays faster by speech than by keyboard, but speech leaves more errors in the final text, so a dictated draft needs a careful editing pass by hand. Rules on AI-written work are a separate question, and a classroom dictation exercise, where a teacher reads and students write, is a different thing.
- Legal Dictation for Shorthand and Steno ExamsLegal dictation is a passage read aloud at a fixed speed, which the candidate takes down in shorthand and then transcribes on a computer within a set time. In the notices we checked, the English shorthand speed is 100 to 120 words per minute, transcription gets 40 to 45 minutes, and mistakes are capped at 3 to 5 percent of the words dictated. The notices set the speed and the limits but do not describe the passage itself.
- Dictation for Nurses, Therapists and Allied HealthNurses and therapists can dictate free text such as narrative notes, shift handoffs and therapy session notes, but flowsheets, a large part of nursing documentation, suit speech poorly. Speech recognition in nursing has so far shown only modest time savings, and AI scribes in therapy need stricter consent than a medical visit.
- Dictation for Academics, Researchers and ThesesDictation works well for drafting academic prose, where speaking is much faster than typing and the argument matters more than the layout. Keep citations, equations and tables on the keyboard or in specialist tools, and check any cloud dictation against your confidentiality rules before you use it on unpublished work or peer-review material.
- Dictation for Journalists and Content CreatorsDictation suits the first draft of a news story, a video script, a newsletter or a blog post, because speech is much faster than typing and reads like talk. It fails where accuracy matters most: names, quotes and numbers must be checked word by word, and a source's audio should go to a tool whose data handling you have read.
Dictation saves time in every job where writing is a large part of the day, and the size of the saving depends on how much of your work is composing text. In a controlled study on an iPhone, speech entered English at 153 words per minute against 52 on the keyboard 1 2. At those rates a 1,000-word draft takes about 6.5 minutes spoken and 19.2 minutes typed, a saving of about 12.7 minutes 3. The saving is real but narrower than it looks: you still have to decide what to say, and you still have to edit.
Three points explain almost everything else on this page:
- The gain is in getting words down, not in thinking. Conversational telephone speech runs at about 196 words per minute 4, about 3.8 times the average in a large online typing test 5. Planning what to write takes the same time either way.
- The profession decides the workflow. A doctor needs medical vocabulary and a record system, a lawyer needs confidentiality and citation formats, an author needs stamina and a method for dialogue, a student needs a free tool and a school that allows it.
- The workflow is changing. Dictating to a human typist is giving way to software that types as you speak, and in medicine to AI scribes that listen to the visit and draft the note. The evidence for scribes is early and mixed, which is why this page separates what has been measured from what vendors claim.
Each section below gives the short answer and the evidence, then points to the guide that covers the subject in depth. For the mechanics of dictating (commands, punctuation, microphones), start with our overview of dictation.
In controlled tests speech is about three times faster than typing, which sets the ceiling for every profession
In the controlled iPhone study, English speech ran 2.93 times faster than the built-in keyboard 1, and that speed gap is the arithmetic behind every claim of hours saved. Handwriting is the slowest method: a 2014 study of 300 university students found a mean copying speed of 22.85 words per minute 6. In a 37,370-volunteer online study on their own phones, the average reached 36.2 words per minute 7, and in an online typing test covering 136 million keystrokes, the average participant reached 51.56 8. Speech reached 153 words per minute in the phone study 1 and runs near 196 in conversational telephone speech 4.
Two cautions keep the numbers honest. First, the 153 figure comes from short messages in a quiet laboratory, and the study's own authors say results outside the laboratory still need study 9. Second, speed to a finished text includes correction. Earlier speech software was reported to compose at only 8 to 15 words per minute 10. Current engines are far more accurate, but a draft is not a final text until a person has read it. Our guide to how much time dictation saves at work turns these inputs into a formula you can run on your own week, and the guide on speaking versus typing speed covers the measurements in detail.
Medicine is where dictation is most established, and where the documentation burden is worst
Doctors spend far more time on records than with patients, and medicine has long relied on dictation and is now adopting AI scribes. A 2016 time and motion study that observed 57 physicians for 430 hours 11 found that they spent 27.0 percent of the office day in direct face time with patients and 49.2 percent on EHR and desk work 12. That is about 1.8 hours of EHR and desk work for every hour of face time with patients 13. Some of it spills past clinic hours, a pattern clinicians call pajama time.
Medical dictation is three different workflows, and the right one depends on the clinician:
| Workflow | How it works | Fits best | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dictate to a transcriptionist | Record audio, a person types and formats it | Letters, operative reports, radiology | Turnaround delay, cost per line |
| Front-end speech recognition | Words appear in the record as you speak, you edit on the spot | Notes written by the clinician alone | Time spent correcting at the desk |
| Back-end speech recognition | Software drafts, an editor corrects before sign-off | High-volume specialties | Editor capacity |
| Ambient AI scribe | Software listens to the visit and drafts the whole note | Conversational outpatient visits | Omissions and inventions in the draft |
Real-world data on dictation itself is limited but useful. In an analysis of 215,207 US ambulatory physicians using the Epic record system between September 2020 and May 2021 14, those who mainly used transcription and dictation spent an average of 4.8 minutes per visit on notes 15, against about 6.1 for physicians who mainly used templates (SmartTools) 16 and 13.1 for physicians who mostly used copy and paste 17. The 4.8 and 6.1 figures come from adjusted models, and all three are observational data, not a trial, but they point the same way as the speed gap.
Accuracy has improved enormously. A 2000 study of physicians dictating reports measured a vocabulary error rate of 14.1 to 15.2 percent for Dragon NaturallySpeaking Medical Suite 3.0 18. A 2025 neurosurgery pilot with three physicians 19 found a mean word error rate, counting all errors, of 1.54 percent for Dragon Medical One and 1.75 percent for a Whisper-based model 20 21, a difference that was not statistically significant 22. Very small samples, but the old accuracy objection no longer describes current engines.
Our guide to medical dictation compares the options on the same checked facts: vocabulary, record-system integration, HIPAA terms and hardware. It also answers the questions people ask most, such as what medical dictation is, how Dragon Medical One differs from Dragon NaturallySpeaking, how much Dragon Medical One costs, which microphone suits a clinic, whether a free medical dictation app exists and where to find medical dictation examples.
AI scribes shorten notes modestly and may ease burnout, but they make errors a clinician must catch
The best evidence on ambient AI scribes is a randomized trial, and it shows a modest, product-dependent time saving. The UCLA trial assigned 238 outpatient physicians across 14 specialties to one of two AI scribes or usual care 23. Physicians using Nabla cut their time in the note by 9.5 percent against the control group 24. Physicians using Microsoft DAX Copilot showed no statistically significant change (-1.7 percent) 25.
The secondary results are more encouraging for wellbeing. The authors concluded that both products resulted in potential improvements in burnout, task load and work exhaustion, but that these findings need confirmation in larger trials 26. The same trial recorded accuracy: clinicians said clinically significant inaccuracies occurred "occasionally" 27. A scribe draft is a draft, and the clinician who signs it owns every sentence. For the wider speech-to-text error picture, note that a 2024 study found roughly 1 percent of Whisper transcriptions contained entire hallucinated phrases that were not in the audio 28.
The market is moving quickly. Healthcare Dive reported on February 5, 2026 that Epic had rolled out an AI tool that drafts clinical notes 29, and Microsoft's Dragon Copilot combines and extends Dragon Medical One and DAX Copilot 30. One vendor says its scribe covers 70,000 clinicians in the NHS (a vendor claim, not an independent count) 31.
Scribes suit conversational visits. Dictation still suits procedures, radiology reads, referral letters and any note the clinician composes alone. Our guide to AI medical scribes and ambient clinical documentation explains how scribes work, what each study measured, consent rules and cost. Its questions cover what an ambient AI scribe is, how much time doctors spend on documentation, whether scribes reduce burnout, how accurate they are and whether to use a scribe or dictation. The terms medical scribe and electronic health record are defined in the glossary.
Medical transcription is shrinking, and the remaining work is editing machine drafts
Speech recognition is reducing demand for transcriptionists, but the job has not disappeared. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics says advances in speech recognition and natural language processing let physicians document encounters in real time, reducing the need for medical transcriptionists 32. It projects employment to decline 4 percent from 2025 to 2035 33, and reports a median annual wage of $40,410 in May 2025 34. The BLS also notes that transcriptionists typically need postsecondary education leading to a certificate 35.
What remains is increasingly review of machine drafts and quality assurance, with pay often counted per line ( transcription line rate) and an optional credential such as the Registered Healthcare Documentation Specialist. Outsourcing industries in India and the Philippines grew up around US dictation, and they are changing with the same technology. Our guide to medical transcription as a job uses official pay and outlook data, and the questions cover whether AI is replacing medical transcription, what transcriptionists earn, what an editor does, how to become one and how a scribe differs from a transcriptionist. For transcription as a technology across all fields, see our overview of transcription.
Nurses and therapists spend a large share of their time on notes, and dictation fits only some of them
In one Western Australian hospital, nurses spent 21 to 28 percent of a shift on documentation 36, and much of that is structured charting that dictation does not fit well. Observers found documentation took 28.1 percent of morning shifts, 22.7 percent of afternoon shifts and 20.9 percent of night shifts 36. Nurses' own estimates were far higher: they reported 50.4 percent on mornings, 40.7 percent on afternoons and 37.9 percent on nights 37.
The practical split is by note type. Flowsheets and tick-box charts resist speech, while free-text notes, handoffs and incident narratives suit it. Therapists are in a better position: they write a narrative note after every session, and formats such as the SOAP note can be dictated with a spoken template. Therapy raises sharper consent questions than a medical visit, because a recording of a session is far more sensitive. Home health and community clinicians may gain the most because they document away from a desk. Evidence specific to these professions is thin compared with physicians, so the guide on dictation for nurses, therapists and allied health says where studies stop. See also how much time nurses spend on documentation, whether nurses can use speech recognition for charting, whether therapists can use AI scribes and how to dictate SOAP notes.
Lawyers dictate in two ways: live recognition and recorded dictation for an assistant
Law firms either speak to software that types as they talk, or record audio and route it to an assistant or service, and the right choice depends on how the firm already works. Legal Futures describes digital dictation as recordings encrypted in real time, then uploaded to a cloud platform or routed by local network, FTP or email for transcription 38. This is digital dictation. Smartphones made it portable: in 2014 a Pennsylvania firm had its lawyers record notes on phones and upload the audio to the firm's data center for transcription 39.
On the software side, Nuance's US store lists Dragon Legal and Dragon Legal Anywhere among its products, while Dragon Home and Dragon Premium do not appear in that menu 40. A US reseller describes Dragon Professional Anywhere, the cloud edition, as cloud-hosted speech recognition for the enterprise 41. Built-in tools such as Word dictation, Windows voice typing and Mac Dictation handle everyday drafting. Apple says Mac Dictation accepts text of any length without a timeout 42 and lets you check whether general text Dictation is processed on your device, not on Siri servers 43.
Legal text has its own accuracy test: citations, section symbols, Latin phrases and party names. A recognizer that handles a general passage well can still miscite a statute, and a legal document is a record someone may rely on. Confidentiality decides where audio may go. A firm that sends client audio to a cloud transcription service should read the provider's terms first. Some tools say plainly that audio leaves the computer: Claude Code's voice dictation, for example, streams audio to Anthropic's servers 44. On-device recognition avoids that question, and Yap, which we make, is one on-device option for Mac and Windows (see the download page); the guide compares others fairly.
Our guide to legal dictation software compares both workflows. The questions are what Dragon Legal is, whether lawyers still dictate, how dictation works between a lawyer and an assistant and how to dictate legal citations and section symbols.
Legal transcription is a separate job, and "legal dictation" also means a shorthand exam
Two other searches share the words "legal dictation," and they mean different things. Legal transcription is the job of turning court proceedings, depositions, interviews and lawyers' dictation into exact, formatted text. Certification comes through court-reporting associations, and the CET practical exam asks for a transcript of 10 to 20 pages in the federal format 45. The benchmark in that world is the National Court Reporters Association's RPR test, which requires 180, 200 and 225 words per minute at 95 percent accuracy 46. Our guide to legal transcription covers the four kinds of work, per-page pay, equipment and how automation changes it, and its questions cover demand, pay, format, how to become a legal transcriptionist and whether you need a foot pedal.
In India, "legal dictation" is a passage of judgment or statute language read aloud at a fixed speed for stenographer exams, taken down in shorthand and transcribed within a time limit. That has nothing to do with speech recognition software. The guide on legal dictation for shorthand and steno exams explains the exam format, vocabulary and practice method, with what legal dictation is, the speed in high court exams, how to practice, shorthand outlines and Hindi and other Indian languages. For the history of shorthand itself, see stenography and shorthand.
Authors have dictated books for centuries, and the method matters more than the software
Dictating a book works when you plan the scenes first and treat the spoken draft as raw material. The practice is old. Milton, blind from 1652, wrote Paradise Lost entirely through dictation with the help of amanuenses 47. Henry James's typist wrote that he found dictation an easier and more inspiring way to compose than writing by hand 48, and that he worked out the scenes of a book until he felt thoroughly possessed of the action before he began dictating it 49. A review of Cita Stelzer's book Working with Winston says that from 1900 on, all of Churchill's writings and speeches were dictated to secretaries 50. In 2015 Salon reported that Terry Pratchett completed his 40th Discworld book with dictation and speech recognition software 51.
The lesson from those accounts is the same: an outline first, spoken scenes second, and a real edit pass third. Fiction needs a method for dialogue, character names and punctuation, and nonfiction dictates best as a talk to one imagined reader. Self-reported dictation speeds circulate widely, but they are anecdotes, and our guide separates them from measured speeds. See writing a book by dictation, with the questions on the best dictation software for writing a book, how many words per hour you can dictate, famous authors who dictated, whether you can dictate a novel and whether walking helps. How dictation changes the prose itself is covered in does dictation change how you write.
Students can draft by voice with free tools, and research supports it for those who struggle to write
Most laptops, phones and school Chromebooks already include speech to text, and the research favors it most for students who find writing hard. In a 2004 study of high school students, essays dictated to speech recognition were better than handwritten ones for students with learning disabilities, and those dictated to a human scribe were better still 52. The students learned to use the software with total word errors under 10 percent 53. A 1995 study of 29 university students with learning disabilities found essays written with speech recognition scored significantly higher than those written without it 54. A 2022 scoping review found possible benefits for secondary pupils with learning difficulties, but that high-quality research is scarce 55.
Specific learning disabilities were the most common disability category among US students served under IDEA in 2022-23, at 32 percent 56, so the group who gain most is large. Speed matters too: handwriting copying rates only reach about 16 words per minute by the end of middle school 57, a fraction of speaking speed. Dictation is also an accepted accommodation. The College Board says most students who use a writer or scribe on paper tests will be approved for a writer/scribe or dictation on digital tests, using the device's built-in speech to text or the student's own software 58. In England, GOV.UK says undergraduate and postgraduate students can get up to 27,783 pounds per year in Disabled Students' Allowance 59. Rules on AI rewriting are separate from rules on dictation, so check each course's policy.
A dictated first draft still needs an editing pass by the student. The guide to speech to text for students gives the workflow, and the questions cover whether it is cheating, the best free app, whether dictation improves writing and the classroom dictation exercise, where a teacher reads and students write. For accommodations and legal rights in general, see our overview of accessibility.
Academics should dictate the argument and keep the keyboard for citations, equations and tables
Research writing divides cleanly: speak the explanation, type the formal parts. Talking through an argument before writing it can help you find its order, and dictated lab and field notes can capture observations while they are fresh. Citations belong in the reference manager rather than spoken in full, and math and LaTeX need specialist tools. Unpublished research and peer-review material limit which cloud tools you may use, so on-device recognition is the safer default. Researchers writing in a second language can draft by voice and edit with care. The guide on dictation for academics, researchers and theses covers the workflow, and the questions are dictating a thesis, dictating math, dictating citations and dictating field notes.
Journalists and creators dictate to write for the ear, and must check every quote and number
Journalists dictated by telephone long before software existed. In the pre-computer newsroom, reporters on deadline would telephone in and dictate their notes to an editor 60, the origin of "Get me rewrite!". Shorthand still counts: the NCTJ recommends Teeline and requires 100 words per minute for certification 61. Today reporters, bloggers, newsletter writers and video creators dictate to draft quickly and to write for the ear, since a spoken draft already sounds like speech.
Two practical points. A script's length follows speaking rate, so a video can be sized by words per minute (the speech rates above give the range). And an interview recording is a transcription job, not dictation. Quotes, names and numbers must be checked word by word, and source protection affects where audio should be processed. See dictation for journalists and content creators, with how many words a 10-minute script is, how to dictate a blog post and whether journalists use dictation. For turning recordings into text, see the overview of transcription.
Email, support and sales are short-form writing, where the saving comes from long replies and batches
Dictation saves the most on long replies, not on one-line answers. Email takes a large share of many office jobs: in Microsoft's 2023 Work Trend Index, the top quarter of Microsoft 365 users spent 8.8 hours a week on it 62. The guide on how to dictate emails faster than you type them covers a three-part structure (purpose, details, the ask), why names, numbers and addresses need a proofread before sending, and how batching replies into one session beats switching between voice and keyboard. Questions include whether dictating email is faster, how much time people spend on email, how to dictate a professional email and the best voice to text app for email.
Support agents and sales reps write many similar short notes, and the saving there comes from combining dictation with templates and voice macros and text expansion (see text expanders and autocomplete). Developers use dictation for comments, commit messages and prompts, and specialist tools such as Cursorless let developers code by voice with a spoken language for structural editing 63. See how developers use dictation and how sales and support teams use it. Open-plan offices raise a different problem: whether you can dictate in one depends on microphone choice and the room, and our guide on dictation and background noise covers it.
Non-native English speakers can draft faster by voice, with a recognizer that fits their accent
Dictation helps people writing in a second language mostly by removing the keyboard as a bottleneck, not by fixing the English. Typing in a second language is slow: on phones, people who never type in English averaged 25.6 words per minute against 37.8 for native English users 64 65. Reading rates also fall for readers with English as a second language 66, so reading a draft back may take longer too. Speaking the draft and then reading it back is a reasonable workflow, but recognition accuracy depends on accent and language settings, so test your own voice on a real paragraph before relying on it. The question on dictation for non-native English speakers at work covers the practice, and our overview of speech recognition explains why accents change accuracy.
Choosing a tool comes down to the same five checks in every profession
The table summarizes the major professions. Use it to find the right guide, then the checks below.
| Profession | Typical workflow | What dictation fits | Watch for | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Physicians | Front-end recognition, AI scribe, transcriptionist | Notes, letters, reports | Errors of omission, HIPAA terms | Medical dictation |
| Nurses, therapists | Narrative notes, handoffs | Free-text notes | Flowsheets, session consent | Nurses and therapists |
| Lawyers | Live recognition or recorded dictation | Memos, letters, drafts | Citations, confidentiality | Legal dictation |
| Authors | Outline, spoken scenes, edit pass | First drafts | Dialogue, names | Writing a book |
| Students | Free built-in tools | Essays, notes | School rules on AI | Students |
| Academics | Speak the argument, type the rest | Drafts, field notes | Citations, math, confidentiality | Academics |
| Journalists, creators | Spoken drafts and scripts | Scripts, newsletters | Quotes and numbers | Journalists and creators |
| Office workers | Batched email sessions | Long replies | Names, numbers | Emails |
- Where does the audio go? On-device processing keeps it on your computer. Check the provider's terms for cloud tools. The HIPAA Security Rule lists encryption of electronic protected health information as an addressable specification 67, which is a starting point for clinicians, not legal advice.
- Does it know your vocabulary? Medical, legal and technical terms are the real accuracy test, not general speech.
- Who checks the output? In medicine and law a person must read the final text.
- Does it work where you write? Integration with the record system, document editor or mail client decides daily use.
- Is a free built-in tool enough? For everyday drafting it often is. Our guides to free dictation software and professional dictation software compare the options, and for Mac and Windows specifics see our pages on Mac and Windows.
Hardware matters as much as software in a noisy room, which is covered in the guide on dictation microphones. If you want to try dictation on a real work document without installing anything, the free online dictation tool runs in the browser.
Measure your own gain for one week before paying for anything
The honest productivity estimate is a formula, and the inputs are yours. Take the hours you spend composing text each week. At the study speeds, ten hours of keyboard drafting produces the same words in about 3.4 hours of speaking 68. Then subtract your editing time, which is larger for a new user, and add nothing for thinking, which does not shrink. Team rollouts often depend on habit and workspace as much as on software. Use the guide to how much time dictation saves at work, the questions on how many hours a week office workers spend writing and whether dictation software is worth it for a business, then time one real week with a free tool before you buy.
Evidence
Every number on this page, with where it comes from. Open a fact to see the exact words in its source.
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- 7.In an online study of 37,370 volunteers typing on their own phones, the average speed was 36.2 words per minute, with 2.3 percent uncorrected errors.
Kseniia Palin et al., Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2019), 2019 · Original
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- 52.For high school students with learning disabilities, essays dictated to speech recognition were better than handwritten ones, and essays dictated to a human scribe were better still; students without learning disabilities showed no difference.
Charles A. MacArthur and Albert R. Cavalier, Exceptional Children, 2004 · Original
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- 54.In a 1995 study of 29 university students with learning disabilities, essays written with a speech recognition system received significantly higher holistic scores than essays written without assistance.
Eleanor L. Higgins and Marshall H. Raskind, Learning Disability Quarterly (ERIC record EJ516141), 1995 · Original
- 55.A 2022 scoping review found that speech-to-text may help secondary pupils with learning difficulties produce texts with fewer errors, help with spelling and improve reading comprehension and word recognition, but that high-quality research is scarce.
Marianne Engen Matre and David Lansing Cameron, Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 2022 · Original
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Questions people ask
- Are medical transcription jobs still available in India?Yes, some medical transcription work is still done in India. We found no current official count of Indian jobs, so its size is unmeasured. The closest official data, for US jobs, projects a 4 percent decline from 2025 to 2035, so it is the closest signal we have for India.
- Can dictation help non-native English speakers write work emails?Yes, it can, but how much it helps depends on how well the recognizer hears your accent. Research finds that results vary by system and by speaker, so test a week of your own email, set the dictation language to the English you write in, and keep dictation for messages where the time saved is larger than the time spent fixing errors.
- Can nurses use speech recognition for charting?Yes. Nurses can use speech recognition for free-text notes, shift summaries and handoffs, but it suits flowsheet tick boxes poorly. The nursing evidence is small: a 2024 review of seven studies reported documentation up to 15 percent faster, and we found no randomized trial of nurses charting by voice.
- Can therapists use AI scribes for progress notes?Yes, therapists can use AI scribes for progress notes, but the bar is higher than in a medical visit. The main allied health study found significantly less time spent on notes, yet it was a mixed-methods study, not a randomized trial. Written client consent, a signed agreement with the vendor and a review of every draft come before the first session.
- Can you dictate a novel?Yes. Novelists have dictated whole books, and Terry Pratchett finished one Discworld book that way with speech recognition software. It works when you plan each scene first, handle dialogue and invented names on purpose, and give the edit as much time as the drafting.
- Can you dictate a thesis or dissertation?Yes. Much of a thesis is prose, and prose is what dictation does best, so you can draft chapters by speaking them. Plan a full editing pass, check whether your tool needs a Microsoft 365 subscription or an internet connection, and confirm with your disability office before you rely on dictation for unsupervised writing.
- Can you do medical transcription from home?Yes. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says medical transcriptionists may work from home, receiving dictation and submitting drafts electronically. Before you start, the employer or vendor must give the provider satisfactory assurance, usually through a business associate agreement, that it will safeguard patient data. Do not pay anyone to get the job.
- Can you get a medical transcription job with no experience?Yes, some postings say no experience is needed and offer training, but the US Bureau of Labor Statistics says employers may prefer applicants with postsecondary medical transcription education. A practical route is to build the terminology and typing skills first, through a program or practice, and then apply. Be wary of any remote offer that asks you to pay for training or equipment.
- Can you use dictation in an open-plan office?Yes, with two conditions. Background noise lowers how accurately the software hears you, so test a close headset microphone in the quietest spot you can get. Speech near colleagues distracts them in open offices, and we found no study that tests dictation directly, so keep long sessions to a private room or a scheduled block.
- Do AI scribes reduce physician burnout?The randomized trials so far report lower burnout or work-exhaustion scores among physicians who used AI scribes. The UCLA authors called their burnout findings secondary, and the scores are self-reported, so the evidence is encouraging, not conclusive.
- Do journalists use dictation software?Yes, journalists use dictation and speech-to-text tools, and the habit goes back to telephoned copy. The closest recent measure is AI transcription, which 49 percent of UK journalists used at least monthly in a Reuters Institute survey, but no survey we found counts how many journalists draft by voice.
- Do lawyers still dictate?Yes. Lawyers still dictate, in two ways: they speak and software types the words live, or they record a message that an assistant or transcription service types up. We found no current survey that measures how many lawyers dictate, so we cannot give a share. The products are still sold and updated, which is the best evidence we have that the practice continues.
- Do you need a certificate or degree to be a medical transcriptionist?The Bureau of Labor Statistics says medical transcriptionists typically need postsecondary education that leads to a certificate. A degree is not the usual requirement, and AHDI's RHDS credential is voluntary, so it is an option for career growth rather than a condition of entry.
- Do you need a certification or course for legal transcription?No single certificate is required for every legal transcription job. The AAERT Certified Electronic Transcriber (CET) is the credential we could verify, and its exam fee is $275 for both parts. A course can teach the format and software, but it does not replace the exam or any state license that court work requires.
- Do you need a foot pedal for legal or medical transcription?No. Legal and medical transcription do not require a foot pedal, and we found no court, agency or certification rule that does. A pedal lets you start, pause and rewind audio with your foot while your hands stay on the keys, but transcription software such as Express Scribe runs the same controls from the keyboard.
- Does dictation help students write better?Sometimes, and the evidence is strongest for students with learning disabilities. Small studies found these students wrote better essays by speech than by keyboard, but in one of them the essays were not longer, and speech leaves more errors in the final text, so a careful edit is still needed. The studies do not show a gain for students without learning disabilities.
- Does walking while dictating help you write?Walking helps you generate ideas. In a controlled 2014 study, walking raised creativity scores on a divergent-thinking test for 81 percent of participants. We found no study that measures drafting or dictating on foot, so the evidence supports walking for finding ideas, not for writing the prose itself.
- How accurate are AI medical scribes?Most AI-drafted clinical notes in a 2024 UC Davis pilot were free of significant errors, but 5.3 percent contained an error that physicians rated as posing serious or imminent risk if left uncorrected. Accuracy varies by product and visit, so every draft needs review against the conversation.
- How are medical transcriptionists paid per line?Medical transcriptionists are paid per line when an employer or agency counts the finished text in lines and multiplies the total by a rate. The traditional unit was a 65-character line, and in 2007 an AHIMA and MTIA task force proposed visible black characters instead. We did not find a current industry standard, so the written definition of a line in your contract decides what you are paid.
- How do developers use dictation at work?Dictation fits the prose part of a developer's job: tickets, pull request descriptions, documentation and review comments. Speaking code is a different task, and the one study we found, from 2006, reports that most developers found it slower than typing. Test any voice-coding tool on your own work before you rely on it.
- How do dictation machines work?A dictation machine records speech, and dictation software converts that sound into text. Software works in stages: it turns the audio into a signal the computer can analyze, a model matches that signal to speech sounds, and a language model chooses the most likely words. Newer systems often use neural networks for these steps, and the quality of the audio sets a limit on how well the software can do.
- How do researchers dictate field notes?One common practice is to record a voice note straight after each session, then transcribe it with a tool that their ethics approval allows, and check every quoted passage against the audio. We found no peer-reviewed study of voice field notes, so treat this as a sound practice to test, not a proven standard. Transcription errors can go unnoticed when you listen back, and speech tools can invent text.
- How do sales and support teams use dictation?Sales reps and support agents can use dictation for call notes, follow-up emails and case updates. Each dictated note saves only a little time, and dictated text leaves more errors, so check names, order numbers and dates before you save. We did not find an independent study of how much of these jobs goes to typing notes, so measure your own week.
- How do you become a legal transcriptionist?There is no single national license for legal transcription. Many US states license court reporters, and one electronic transcription credential is the AAERT Certified Electronic Transcriber (CET), which has a knowledge exam and a practical transcript. Court-reporting training typically takes two or three years.
- How do you become a medical transcriptionist?Medical transcriptionists typically need a postsecondary program that leads to a certificate, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics says can typically be completed in less than a year. Employers may prefer trained applicants, and AHDI offers the RHDS and CHDS credentials for those who want a recognized professional certification.
- How do you dictate a blog post?Outline the post as a set of headings, dictate each section in short runs as if you were explaining it to one reader, and leave the editing, links and fact checks for a separate pass at the keyboard. Drafting by voice is the fastest step, because speech is much quicker than typing for getting words down.
- How do you dictate a medical letter?Dictate a medical letter in a fixed order: patient identifiers and date, the recipient, the reason for writing, the clinical content in short paragraphs, the plan, the closing and any copy recipients. Plan the order before you speak, say the formatting commands your software supports, then review the draft before it is signed. The order here is a practical structure, not a published standard, so match your practice's template where one exists.
- How do you dictate a professional email?Decide the purpose in one sentence, then speak the purpose, the details and the ask, in that order. Check names, numbers and dates on screen before you send. Outlook's Dictate button needs a Microsoft 365 subscription, Windows voice typing needs an internet connection, and Apple says Mac dictation of general text is processed on your device.
- How do you dictate citations and references?Do not dictate a citation in full, because speech recognition is unreliable on rare names. Dictate the sentence, leave a placeholder where the citation belongs, and insert the reference afterwards with your reference manager's keyboard shortcut. Then check every author name and year against the reference list, not against the transcript.
- How do you dictate legal citations and section symbols?In Microsoft Word's dictation, say "section sign" to get § and "paragraph sign" to get ¶. On Windows you can also type § with Alt+0167. Dictated citations need checking against their sources, because recognition can change a number or a case name without any warning.
- How do you dictate math equations?Dictate the sentences around an equation, and insert the equation with an editor built for it. Standard dictation in Word and on a Mac inserts single symbols such as plus and equal signs, but it does not build fractions, superscripts or numbered equations. Specialist tools can dictate equation structure, but their coverage is narrow, so test any tool on your own equations before a submission.
- How do you dictate SOAP notes?Dictate the note in order, saying each heading aloud as a cue: Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan. Say measured values in full with their units, keep the template short, then read the draft back and check names, numbers and any minutes or signature fields before you sign.
- How do you practice legal dictation for steno exams?Practice legal dictation with timed audio at your post's speed, then transcribe within the time the notice allows and count every mistake against the limit. The Delhi arbitration notice allows 40 minutes to transcribe, and the mistake limit in your own notice sets the second target, so train to both.
- How does legal dictation work between a lawyer and an assistant?The lawyer records the dictation on a device or in an app. The recording reaches an assistant or transcription service through a platform, a server or email, and the typist returns a draft. The lawyer proofreads that draft against the recording before it becomes final, and the firm decides who may hear the audio at each step.
- How is legal dictation done in Hindi and other Indian languages?Legal dictation in Hindi works like the English test: a passage is read at a fixed speed, taken down in shorthand and then transcribed on a computer within a set time. The speed, time limit and typing rules are set separately for Hindi in each notice. In the two Jharkhand High Court notices we opened, Hindi shorthand was 70 words per minute in one 2013 advertisement and 60 in another, closing in February 2014. We found no figures for other Indian languages.
- How many hours a week do office workers spend writing?The figures available are survey averages, not logged hours. A 2018 survey of professionals in several fields put writing at 26 to 42 percent of the work week, about 10 to 17 hours on a 40-hour week. People who write at least two hours a week for work averaged 20.4 hours in a 2016 survey, but that group is self-selected. Your own log is the most reliable figure for your job.
- How many words is a 10-minute video script?A 10-minute video script is about 1,250 to 1,500 words at a normal speaking pace of 125 to 150 words per minute. A narrator reading in an audiobook style needs about 1,400 to 1,800, so time your own pace with a read-aloud before you write.
- How many words per hour can you dictate?Reading a text you already have aloud runs at normal speaking pace, about 7,500 to 9,000 words an hour. Composing as you speak is far slower, at roughly 480 to 900 words an hour on older software, so planning may limit a book as much as speaking does.
- How much do medical transcriptionists make?In May 2025 the median US medical transcriptionist earned $40,410 a year, or $19.43 an hour, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $28,250 and the highest 10 percent earned more than $55,950.
- How much does Dragon Medical One cost?Nuance does not publish a price for Dragon Medical One, so the figures come from resellers. They quote $99 per user per month on a one-year term, $89 on two years and $79 on three, plus a one-time setup fee that one vendor puts at $525. A three-year commitment at $79 comes to $2,844 per user before setup.
- How much does legal transcription pay?We found no official schedule for freelance legal transcription pay. The figures you can verify are court maximums per original page, such as $4.40 for an ordinary federal 30-day transcript, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics median of $72,420 a year for court reporters and simultaneous captioners.
- How much time do doctors spend on documentation?Physicians spend about 1.8 hours on electronic health record and desk work for every hour they spend face to face with patients, according to a 2016 time-and-motion study of US physicians. A 2017 EHR log study found 5.9 hours a weekday in the system, and the figure varies by specialty, setting and how notes are written.
- How much time do nurses spend on documentation?Nurses spend roughly a fifth to a third of their practice time on documentation, and EHR time data from one health system put flowsheet time at 31.11 percent of a 12-hour shift. Observed time and self-reports disagree, so the right figure depends on how the time was measured.
- How much time do people spend on email at work?The best evidence we could check is a news report of Microsoft's 2023 Work Trend Index: the top quarter of Microsoft 365 users spent 8.8 hours a week on email, about 22 percent of a 40-hour week. That is the heaviest group, not the average, and we found no current, checkable figure for the typical worker, so measure your own week.
- Is dictating emails faster than typing them?Yes, for a reply you have already planned. In a controlled study, English speech entry ran about 2.9 times faster than typing on a phone, so 1,000 words take about 6.5 minutes to speak and 19.2 to type. Composing by speech from nothing is much slower, so decide what you want to say first, then dictate it and proofread the names and numbers.
- Is dictation software worth it for a business?Dictation software can be worth it for a business when people who write prose every day save more time than the seat costs. At $15 per user per month, a seat breaks even after about 37 minutes a month at the median wage, so the real test is whether each person saves that much. It is not worth buying when writing is a small share of the work, when the text is mostly code or data, or when the built-in tool already does the job.
- Is legal transcription a good career?Legal transcription is a reasonable career if you want steady, certified court work, and a harder one if you plan to rely on freelance pay. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects little or no change in court reporter jobs through 2035, but it expects AI transcription to reduce demand.
- Is legal transcription hard?Legal transcription is hard to do to the standard courts require, because the text must be exact and follow a fixed format. Simple dictation can be learned, but court-level work takes years, and the credentials set high accuracy bars.
- Is legal transcription still in demand?Yes, for court reporting, where the US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects little or no change in employment from 2025 to 2035. The same agency expects AI transcription to dampen demand, and a raw machine draft is not a substitute for a checked, certified transcript.
- Is medical transcription a good career?It is a modest-paying job with a shrinking outlook, not a growth career. The median wage was $40,410 in May 2025, and US employment is projected to fall 4 percent from 2025 to 2035, although about 6,200 openings a year still arise. It suits people who want detail-focused work that can be remote, and who accept that the job is shifting to checking machine drafts.
- Is medical transcription being replaced by AI?Not yet, but the job is shrinking. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment to fall 4 percent from 2025 to 2035, and the work that remains includes reviewing and correcting machine drafts, which still needs a trained person to catch errors.
- Is medical transcription hard?Yes, but in a specific way. The hard part is medical terminology, anatomy, report rules and catching errors, not typing speed. Formal programs typically take under a year, and the AHDI practical exam tests critical thinking more than keyboarding.
- Is there a free medical dictation app?Yes, free dictation apps exist, but none we found is built for clinical records. Free general tools such as Handy work offline and suit letters and general notes with no patient identifiers. Patient information needs a vendor that signs a business associate agreement, whether the tool is free or paid.
- Is using speech to text for an essay cheating?No. Speech to text puts your own words on the page, just as typing does, so using it is not cheating on its own. It becomes a problem when a teacher or test rule bans it, when you use it without an approved accommodation, or when an AI tool writes or rewrites the essay.
- Should doctors use an AI scribe or dictation?Use an AI scribe for conversational visits, where the note has to capture a two-person exchange, and dictation for work you narrate, such as procedures, radiology reports and letters. No large trial has compared the two head to head, so the choice rests on what your notes contain, how much review you can do and what your privacy rules allow.
- What are shorthand outlines for legal dictation?Shorthand outlines are short written forms for words and phrases that come up often, so writing them once saves time on every repeat. Build your list from your own practice passages and test each outline at speed. The notices we checked do not name a shorthand system or publish outlines, so confirm which system your exam uses before you learn any.
- What does a medical transcription editor do?A medical transcription editor reviews a transcript or machine draft against the original dictation, corrects errors in terminology, accuracy, completeness and format, and returns it for approval. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists reviewing and editing speech recognition drafts among the usual duties of medical transcriptionists.
- What format does a legal transcript follow?A legal transcript follows the format set by the court or firm that orders it. The federal format is the most detailed standard we could verify: 25 lines of text per page, a 1-3/4 inch left margin, about 63 characters per line and double spacing.
- What is a dictation exercise in school?In school, a dictation exercise is a task where a teacher reads a passage aloud and students write it down, usually in an exercise book. It is meant to build listening and writing skills. It is not voice typing: no software is involved, and the student does all the writing.
- What is an ambient AI scribe?An ambient AI scribe listens to a clinical visit, transcribes the conversation and drafts the clinical note. The clinician reviews, edits and signs the draft, and the software does not finalize the note on its own.
- What is Dragon Legal, and is it still sold?Dragon Legal is Nuance's version of its Dragon speech recognition software, with a legal vocabulary for client and case documentation. It is still sold: Nuance's US store lists Dragon Legal and Dragon Legal Anywhere, and a US reseller lists the cloud subscription at 780 dollars per year. Confirm the current price and any end-of-sale date with Nuance before you sign a contract.
- What is legal dictation?Legal dictation is a passage that a shorthand or steno candidate writes down while an examiner reads it aloud at a fixed speed, then types as a transcript within a set time. In the English tests we checked, the speed is 100 to 120 words per minute, and the Supreme Court and Delhi arbitration notices we checked also set a mistake limit.
- What is legal transcription?Legal transcription turns recorded speech from legal settings, such as court proceedings, depositions, law-firm dictation and evidence recordings, into exact written text that follows a set format. Federal law requires federal court sessions to be recorded verbatim, and every draft should be checked against the audio before anyone relies on it.
- What is medical dictation?Medical dictation is a clinician's spoken account of a patient visit, turned into text for the medical record. It happens in three ways: a transcriptionist types from a recording, speech recognition writes the words as the clinician speaks, or an AI scribe drafts a note from the conversation. Only the first two involve dictating, because the clinician speaks the notes on purpose.
- What is medical transcription?Medical transcription is the work of turning a clinician's recorded dictation into a formatted medical report. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the job as listening to physicians' recorded dictation and transcribing it into reports. Today a speech recognition program may make the first draft, and the transcriptionist then checks and corrects it.
- What is the best dictation software for writing a book?For most writers the best dictation software is the tool already on your computer, because it is already built into your computer and, on a Mac, accepts text of any length. Pay for an app only when a book-length draft needs something the built-in tool does not give you, such as a clear answer on where your audio is processed or more words than a free plan allows. Dictate the draft, then do the edit by keyboard.
- What is the best free speech to text app for students?For most students, the best free speech to text app is the one built into the device or document they already use, such as Chromebook Dictation, Windows voice typing, Google Docs voice typing or Mac Dictation. Pick by the device you own, and try a separate app only when the built-in tool misses something you need, such as offline use or your language.
- What is the best handheld device or recorder for doctor dictation?If you dictate live at a desk, the best device is a close dictation microphone or a wired headset that your software supports, not a standalone recorder. A handheld recorder makes sense only when audio files go to a transcriptionist or a transcription service, and then the recording must meet the software's file format and sampling rate, which dictation software generally expects at 16 kHz or higher.
- What is the best legal dictation software?There is no single best legal dictation software, but a lawyer who drafts alone on Windows can start with Dragon Legal, which Nuance says is built with a legal vocabulary. On a Mac, built-in Apple Dictation handles everyday drafting, and Apple says it processes general text on the device. A firm whose assistants type up recordings needs a digital dictation platform, and its confidentiality duties decide which tool it may use.
- What is the best medical dictation software?There is no single best product. For speaking straight into an EHR, Dragon Medical One is the product our sources name for EHR dictation; for drafting a note from the visit, compare AI scribes instead; for letters and general notes, a built-in tool may be enough. Test each shortlisted product on ten of your own notes, and get a business associate agreement before any patient data goes in.
- What is the best microphone for medical dictation?For medical dictation, the best microphone is a close, dictation-grade model that your software vendor supports. For Dragon Medical One, the Philips SpeechMike Premium Touch is a model to test first. Philips says the SpeechMike succeeds Nuance's PowerMic, and a Stony Brook IT list names the SpeechMike among devices Nuance has tested and recommends. A headset held about an inch from the mouth is the other strong choice, and a laptop's built-in microphone sits farthest from the speaker.
- What is the best voice to text app for email?There is no single best app. For most people the dictation built into the mail program or the operating system is enough. A dedicated app is worth it when you want one tool across every program, or when you need your audio processed on your own device. Check the platform, the account rules, and where the audio goes before you choose.
- What is the best voice to text software for business?There is no single best voice to text software for every business. For most office work, start with the dictation already built into the app where your team writes, if your license covers it. Pay for a dedicated product such as Dragon Professional only when the built-in tools fail on your apps or your vocabulary.
- What is the difference between a medical scribe and a medical transcriptionist?A medical scribe records the visit as it happens, under the physician's direction, and does not act independently. A medical transcriptionist usually types up a recording the clinician made earlier, turning dictation into a formatted report. For scribes, Medicare guidance has the physician co-sign the note as an accurate record.
- What is the difference between Dragon Medical One and Dragon NaturallySpeaking?Dragon Medical One is Nuance's clinical speech recognition product, sold per clinician as a cloud subscription and built to write into health records. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is the general desktop product for ordinary documents, sold as a license for one user. Dragon Medical Practice Edition, the older medical desktop product, reached end of life in 2021, so it is not a current option for clinical notes.
- What language is used in Supreme Court legal dictation?In the Supreme Court of India's 2024 recruitment notice, the shorthand test is in English for all three posts: Court Master (Shorthand), Senior Personal Assistant and Personal Assistant. The speed is 120, 110 or 100 words per minute depending on the post. High Court tests can be set in Hindi, so check the notice for your court and post.
- What speed is legal dictation in high court steno exams?The official notices we checked set English shorthand for legal dictation at 100 to 120 words per minute. The Supreme Court's Court Master post is the fastest at 120, and the Delhi High Court's Senior Personal Assistant test is at 110, so the figure depends on the post and the notice.
- What typing speed do you need for law school?No law school that I could find sets a typing speed for admission. What matters is finishing timed exams: the average in a large online typing test was 51.56 words per minute, which means about 19 minutes for a 1,000-word answer, so compare your own timed speed with that figure and practice in your school's exam software.
- What typing speed do you need to be a medical scribe?The medical scribe postings we read ask for a typing speed of 60 words per minute, and no national standard sets a number. That is above the average online typist, who managed 51.56 words per minute, so plan to practice until you can hold 60 with few errors.
- Where can you find medical dictation examples and samples?MTSamples is a free source of medical dictation examples, but it holds text reports rather than audio. For audio you can transcribe, Express Scribe's free practice files include completed transcripts, and the PriMock57 dataset offers recorded mock clinician-patient consultations for research. Use all of them for practice, never as a verified clinical record.
- Where can you practice medical transcription with sample audio?The free practice files from Express Scribe, a transcription playback program, are the sample audio we could confirm: each practice recording comes with a completed transcript to check your work against. MTSamples has thousands of free medical reports, but its home page describes them as reports and does not mention audio, and they are user-contributed, so use them for vocabulary rather than as a reference.
- Which legal dictation book is best for steno practice?We found no independent review or exam notice that names a best legal dictation book for steno practice. The title our searches found is Dr. G. D. Bist's *Legal Dictations*, which the seller describes as containing court judgements, with audio CDs for self-learners. Choose by the language, the speed and the audio that fit your own test.
- Which legal transcription companies hire transcriptionists?Verbit, Veritext and Rev publish openings for legal transcriptionists, and GMR Transcription recruits through job boards, according to their own pages. They recruit and pay in different ways, and none of the sources we checked ranks one of them as the best place to work.
Terms in this topic
- Back-end speech recognitionBack-end speech recognition is a workflow in which the dictated audio is recognized and then edited by someone else, usually a transcriptionist, before it is signed. Its main trade-off is the cost and time of the second pass against the writer's own editing effort.
- CopytakerA copytaker was a typist in a newspaper office who took down stories that reporters dictated over the telephone. The Collins English Dictionary defines the role this way, and it predates the computer-based filing that replaced it.
- Dictation templateA dictation template is a block of text saved under a short spoken phrase, so one phrase inserts the whole block. Dragon calls these auto-texts, and Microsoft's Dragon Medical One guide documents the command that creates one from selected text.
- Electronic health record (EHR)An electronic health record (EHR) is a digital record of a patient's health information, built up over time from visits across care settings. The federal eCQI glossary also calls it an electronic medical record (EMR), and it is where dictated and typed notes end up.
- Front-end speech recognitionFront-end speech recognition is a workflow in which the person who dictates also reviews, corrects and signs the text, instead of passing the audio to someone else. The term is most common in radiology, where it is set against back-end transcription.
- Medical scribeA medical scribe is a person, or more recently an AI tool, that records what happens in a clinical visit and writes it into the chart so the clinician can focus on the patient. The clinician remains responsible for the note and must check and sign it.
- Pajama timePajama time is the record-keeping that clinicians finish after their clinic day ends, often at home in the evening. A 2017 study of primary care clinicians measured 86 minutes of EHR work per weekday after clinic hours.
- Registered Healthcare Documentation Specialist (RHDS)The Registered Healthcare Documentation Specialist (RHDS) is a voluntary credential from AHDI for people who create healthcare documentation. It is awarded after an exam of 120 questions, and it is a prerequisite for the CHDS.
- ScopistA scopist edits the transcripts of official proceedings that court reporters create. Scopists are typically paid by the page, starting from $1.00 to $1.50 per page, and the role is also called transcript editor.
- SOAP noteA SOAP note is a structured clinical note with four parts: Subjective, Objective, Assessment and Plan. The format was developed by Larry Weed, and a StatPearls reference article describes it as a widely used documentation method for clinicians.
- Transcription line rateA transcription line is a unit of 65 characters, and the line count is the number of such units in a document. The transcription line rate is the price paid for each line, so the unit controls how transcribed work is measured.
Referenced by
- Dictation and Voice Typing: How to Talk Instead of TypeTopic
- Dictation Software: How to Choose the Right AppTopic
- Typing Speed: Average WPM and How to Type FasterTopic
- Mac Dictation: How to Dictate and Control a Mac by VoiceTopic
- Voice Typing in Google Docs, Word and Every Other AppTopic
- Transcription: How to Turn Audio and Video Into TextTopic
- Speech to Text Privacy: Where Your Voice GoesTopic
- Medical Dictation: Software, Devices and How It WorksGuide
- Writing a Book by Dictation: Software and WorkflowGuide
- How to Dictate Emails Faster Than You Type ThemGuide
- How Much Time Dictation Saves at WorkGuide
- AI Medical Scribes and Ambient Clinical DocumentationGuide
- Medical Transcription: The Job, the Pay and AIGuide
- Legal Dictation Software for Lawyers and Law FirmsGuide
- Legal Transcription: The Job, Formats and PayGuide
- Speech to Text for Students: Essays, Notes, HomeworkGuide
- Legal Dictation for Shorthand and Steno ExamsGuide
- Dictation for Nurses, Therapists and Allied HealthGuide
- Dictation for Academics, Researchers and ThesesGuide
- Dictation for Journalists and Content CreatorsGuide
- Are medical transcription jobs still available in India?Question
- Can you dictate a thesis or dissertation?Question
- Do AI scribes reduce physician burnout?Question
- Do journalists use dictation software?Question