Is dictating emails faster than typing them?

Yes, for email you have already planned. 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, about 2.9 times faster ^{1 2}. That lead holds for a reply you have already worked out. It shrinks, and can reverse, when you use speech to find the words as you go.

Speaking a planned reply saves about 13 minutes per 1,000 words

The saving grows with length, because it is the gap between two speeds multiplied by the number of words. At the study's rates, 1,000 words take about 6.5 minutes to speak and about 19.2 minutes to type, a difference of about 12.7 minutes ³. A one-line reply such as "Thursday works for me" saves only seconds either way. The method matters most for long replies.

Treat these numbers with care. The participants transcribed short phrases in a laboratory, and the authors say that results outside the laboratory still need study ⁴. Your own rate depends on your voice, your microphone, your room and your recognizer. Time a week of real replies before you decide how much dictation will help you.

Composing by speech from scratch is much slower than typing

The gain disappears when you use speech to work out the wording. Earlier speech software let people compose at 8 to 15 words per minute ⁵. At that rate, composing 1,000 words takes about 67 to 125 minutes ⁶, against about 19.2 minutes to type the same words ³.

The reason is planning. In an IBM study of letter writing, about two-thirds of the time spent composing went on planning, whether the letter was written, dictated or spoken ⁷. Dictation saves time on the typing. It does not save time on deciding what to say. So settle the purpose in one sentence before you press the microphone, and speak only the words you have already chosen.

Dictated text needs a check that typed text needs less often

Dictation makes different mistakes from typing. In the same phone study, speech had a lower corrected error rate during entry, 5.30 percent against 11.22 percent on the keyboard. Yet it left slightly more uncorrected errors in the final text, 1.30 percent against 0.79 percent ⁸. The errors that survive can look right on screen, such as a name spelled the way it sounds or a figure that is one digit off.

So a dictated email is faster to produce but still needs a read before it goes out. Put that read into your estimate. If you skip it, the saving on the first draft can turn into a correction email later.

When typing is the faster choice

• A one-line answer, a link or a reference number. Typing these is quicker than starting a dictation session.
• A reply you are still working out. If the thinking is still going on, the spoken draft will be long, repetitive and slow to fix.
• A noisy room. Other voices and machines can get in the way of recognition, so test dictation in your own office before you rely on it there.
• Text that must be exact. Passwords, account numbers and code are safer typed and checked by eye.

What to do this week

1. Choose three replies from your inbox that are longer than 100 words.
2. Write one sentence for each, saying what the reply must achieve.
3. Dictate each reply in one pass, then proofread the names, numbers, dates and addresses on screen.
4. Time how long each reply took, from opening it to sending it, and compare with a reply of similar length that you typed.

Your own numbers will tell you more than any study. For the step-by-step method, see how to dictate a professional email and our guide to dictating email. For the general version of this question, which covers dictation outside email, see is dictation faster than typing. Our overview of dictation for work and study covers the rest of the field.