Dictation Punctuation Commands in Other Languages

Dictation punctuation works in the language you dictate. You say the name of a mark in that language, and the mark that appears follows that language's rules. The English words "question mark" or "comma" do not cover what a Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Hindi or Arabic writer needs, and the vendors publish a separate command list for each language. This guide gives those lists and the typographic rule behind each one. For the English commands, see our guide to dictation punctuation.

You say punctuation in the language you are dictating, not in English

Each language has its own spoken name for every mark. The table below gives the phrase that produces the question mark, the comma and the full stop in eight languages, with the mark each phrase inserts. Say the phrase from the table for the language your dictation is set to.

The Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Simplified Chinese rows come from Apple's Mac command tables, one for each language: Spanish, French, German, Japanese and Simplified Chinese. The Hindi and Arabic rows come from Microsoft's Dictate in Word tables. ^{1 2}

The table shows two things. First, the marks are not the same in every language: Hindi uses a different full stop, Arabic a different comma, and Chinese full-width marks. Second, the spoken names differ even where the marks match. Apple's German table gives the question mark as Fragezeichen ³, and its Simplified Chinese table gives 问号 for the same ？ mark ⁴.

Some marks need no spoken command at all. Apple says that in supported languages, Dictation adds some punctuation as you speak. The French help page says so in these words: ⁵ Which marks are added automatically, and in which languages, is covered in the next section.

Automatic punctuation is available in fewer languages than dictation itself

Apple's Mac Dictation adds punctuation automatically in 33 language variants. Its feature list gives that count ⁶, which is about 52 percent of the variants ⁷. English accounts for 11 of them ⁸, and Spanish for 4 ⁹. The rest is the difference, which is 18 variants ¹⁰.

The variant list matters more than the language name. Apple's list includes German (Germany) and German (Switzerland) for automatic punctuation ¹¹. Japanese and Korean appear as separate entries ¹². Dictation support and automatic punctuation are listed separately, so check the list for your exact variant.

The other platforms are less specific. Google says that punctuation might not be available in every language that Gboard voice typing supports ¹³. Microsoft warns that its Preview languages in Dictate in Word may have lower accuracy or limited punctuation support ¹⁴.

Test the setting in your language before you rely on it. On the Mac, the automatic marks can be turned off with the Auto-punctuation setting in Keyboard settings ¹⁵.

Spanish adds opening question and exclamation marks

Spanish questions take two marks. The opening ¿ goes at the start of the sentence, and the closing ? goes at the end ¹⁶. Saying only the closing phrase leaves the sentence without its opening sign.

Apple's Spanish Mac table gives the closing mark only. The phrase signo de interrogación produces ?, and the table has no command for the opening ¿ ¹⁷. Microsoft's Dictate in Word table does list the opening marks: the phrase signo de apertura de interrogación gives ¿, and signo de apertura de exclamación gives ¡ ¹⁸.

Two practical rules follow from those tables:

1. In Word, say the opening phrase, signo de apertura de interrogación, immediately before the words of the question.
2. On the Mac, the Spanish command list has no command for the opening ¿. Type it yourself, or add a text replacement so a short typed string gives the mark.

On the Mac, automatic punctuation covers four Spanish variants: Spanish (Colombia), (Mexico), (Spain) and (United States) ⁹. Chile is not on that list, so a Chilean writer should test the output before relying on the automatic marks.

The same Apple table gives Spanish quotation marks as curly marks, with comillas de apertura for the opening mark and comillas de cierre for the closing one ¹⁷. Spanish typesetting also sometimes uses « », so a writer who needs guillemets should check the output of each quotation rather than assume either form. The accent marks and the ñ are covered in our guide to Spanish speech to text, and the question on Spanish dictation punctuation gives the short version.

French puts a non-breaking space before the colon and uses guillemets

French typography puts a non-breaking space before the colon. The Québec language office's spacing table gives the colon (deux-points) a non-breaking space before it and a normal space after it ¹⁹. The space is there so that the colon stays on the same line as the word before it. A dictation tool may insert a normal space where the style asks for the non-breaking one, so check the output of a colon in each document.

Microsoft's French table for Dictate in Word maps the colon to deux points and the left guillemet to guillemet gauche, guillemet ouvrant, which gives « ²⁰. The guillemet is the mark French quotations open with, so that table's quotation command gives the right mark for French.

Three limits apply. The OQLF is the language office of Québec, and its table reflects Québec practice. The rules for France come from the Imprimerie nationale's lexicon, which this guide could not check, so the exact width of the space may differ. And Apple's French table maps point d'interrogation to the question mark ²¹, so any mark the table does not list needs the same caution about typing special marks. The French punctuation question has the spoken phrases in one place, and the wider picture of French, German and other European languages is in our guide to speech to text in French, German and more.

German opens quotations with low marks, and vendors disagree on which marks dictation inserts

German opens a quotation with a low mark and closes it with a high one. The 2024 official rules print direct speech with „ at the start and “ at the end, as in „Dass ich immer arbeiten muss!“, seufzte sie ²². Apple's German table matches that: the phrase Anführungszeichen unten gives the low opening mark „, and Anführungszeichen oben gives the high closing mark “ ²³.

Microsoft's German table does not match. Its phrase for the opening quotation mark maps to « », the guillemets ²⁴. Both vendors publish these tables, so a German writer cannot assume the tool's quotation marks are right. Check the first quotation in a document, and type „ yourself if the tool gives « ».

The German command table has the usual marks under these spoken names:

These come from Apple's German table ³, the same table as the quotation marks ²³. The table gives the words and the marks only, not how often each word is recognized, so say each one in a test sentence before you rely on it in a longer text. German also has automatic punctuation on the Mac for the variants that Apple lists, including Germany and Switzerland ¹¹. Our guide to speech to text in French, German and more covers which German variants each platform supports, and the question on German dictation punctuation lists the commands on their own.

Japanese and Chinese use full-width marks and the ideographic full stop

Chinese text uses full-width marks, and the ideographic full stop can end its sentences. Unicode's IDEOGRAPHIC FULL STOP (U+3002) is listed in the CJK Symbols and Punctuation block, and its usage note says it can end sentences at appropriate places ²⁵. Apple's Simplified Chinese table maps 逗号 to a full-width comma (，), 句号 to the ideographic full stop (。), and 问号 to a full-width question mark (？) ⁴.

The Japanese table gives half-width marks. Apple's Japanese command table maps カンマ to a half-width comma (,) and ピリオド to a half-width period (.) ²⁶. The table does not list 読点 (、) or 句点 (。), so a Japanese writer who wants the ideographic marks must type them or edit the output. Each comma and period dictated with those commands therefore arrives half-width, and the consistency rule below applies to the marks you insert by hand.

Japanese public writing follows a consistency rule. The 2022 government guidance says that a single document must use one comma style throughout ²⁷. For dictation, the practical result is to pick one style and check every comma you insert.

For how speech turns into kanji or hanzi without a separate typing step, see our guide to Japanese, Chinese and Korean speech to text. The input method editor is the typing software that dictation usually skips.

Hindi and Arabic have their own full stop, comma and question mark

Hindi ends sentences with the danda, not a period. The daṇḍa is used as the full stop in Hindi ²⁸. Unicode's DEVANAGARI DANDA (U+0964) has a usage note that says it can end sentences at appropriate places ²⁹. Microsoft's Hindi table maps the spoken phrase पूर्ण विराम to the danda (।) ¹. The same table also accepts the longer phrase पूर्ण विराम चिन्ह for the danda, so either phrase works in that tool. Say the Hindi phrase rather than the English word, because each language has its own command list. The Hindi voice typing guide covers which Hindi tools support these commands.

Arabic has its own comma and question mark. Microsoft's Arabic tables map فاصلة to the Arabic comma (،) and علامة استفهام to the Arabic question mark (؟) ². The same rows give فاصلة منقوطة for the semicolon (؛) ², so the Arabic set is the comma, the question mark and the semicolon, each with its own Arabic name. The Arabic comma is a separate character, U+060C, and it entered Unicode in version 1.1 in 1993 ³⁰. Arabic is written right to left, so check how the marks sit in mixed English and Arabic text; the right-to-left script entry explains why a mark can appear on the wrong side. Our guide to Arabic speech to text covers the dialects and tools.

Check the marks in your language before you rely on a command list

Use the vendor's table for your exact language and variant, and read the output of the first paragraph. The Mac, iPhone, Windows and Word tables differ from one another, and the same language can have one set of commands in one app and another in a different one. Where a table is missing a mark, such as the Spanish opening question mark on the Mac or the Japanese ideographic marks, type it once and move on.

The tables also say nothing about accuracy. A command list shows which marks a feature can insert, not how often it hears them correctly. Treat each language as a separate test.

To set up a second dictation language on the Mac:

1. In macOS 27, open Dictation in Keyboard settings, then click the Edit button next to Languages, and select a language and region ³¹.
2. Dictate one sentence that contains each mark you need, in the language you chose, and read the result.
3. If the automatic marks are not what you want, turn off the Auto-punctuation setting ¹⁵.

Apple's guide says you can change the language you dictate in, or set up several languages and switch between them as needed ³². It says nothing about recognizing two languages within one sentence, so a sentence that mixes Spanish and English marks is best dictated one language at a time.

For more on the languages each tool supports, see our guide to dictation languages on each app and device, and our guide to multilingual dictation if you switch languages within a document. A short card with the spoken phrase beside each mark you need, one card per language, is the quickest way to avoid a wrong mark in the middle of a sentence.