Typing with Your Voice is Easy

Typing with Your Voice is Easy

This tip was written for everyone using Windows 10 or Windows 11

Typing with your voice (“voice recognition”) has come a long way in just a few years. And though it’s still not 100% accurate, it’s accurate enough and reliable enough you can use it to dictate recipes, emails, reminders, notes, essays, short stories, journals, and even angry letters to the editor!

Typing with Your Voice in Windows 10
(Windows 10 Dictation)

Use the Windows key shortcut Windows key + H to begin.  Click the “microphone” icon in the dictation bar.

When it’s done initializing, you’ll see “Listening” and then you can start talking. Here’s an example of Windows 10 Dictation being used with Notepad. (It works with almost any app including MS Word, Notepad, WordPad, Gmail, Outlook, Outlook.com, etc.) 

As you can see above Windows 10 Dictation is “Listening…” and you can see what I’ve dictated so far.  You can add punctuation by saying words like “comma”, “period”, “semi-colon”, “exclamation point”, etc.  And if you want a new line, say, “new line”. If you want a new paragraph, say “new paragraph”. You get the idea. The more you use Windows Dictation, the better it gets at understanding your voice.

When you’re done dictating say “Stop dictating”.

Typing with Your Voice in Windows 11
(Microsoft Speech Services)

Typing with your voice gets even better, more accurate, and more fluid in Windows 11. Dictation even gets a new name in Windows 11… it’s now called “Microsoft Speech Services”. However, it works the same way it works in Windows 10.  You can open Windows Speech Services (Dictation) in Windows 11 by using the Windows key + H shortcut.

With Windows Speech Services open in Windows 11, you can begin voice typing, by clicking on the microphone icon, or as Microsoft puts it the “mic button”.

I put Windows Speech Services in Windows 11 through a rather tricky test using a poem by A.E. Housman. I’ll give Windows Speech Service an A-minus, it only made one major mistake.

Where it should have typed “rose lipt maids”, Windows Speech Services typed “rows left”. But “rose lipt” isn’t a common expression and I won’t be overly critical because Windows Speech Services worked very well. Even the spelling and grammar checker I’m using right now (Grammarly) does not like the word “lipt”.

And, like Windows 10’s Dictation feature, you can use Windows 11 Microsoft Voice Services to type reminders, notes, recipes, journals, essays, stories, lists, emails, and more.

Here’s an email I wrote using Microsoft Speech Services…

Unfortunately (and predictably) Darcy ignored my email, and I didn’t get my raise. But I can’t blame that on Microsoft Speech Services!

When you first start using Microsoft Speech Services in Windows 11, it will ask if you want to contribute your voice clips to “make Speech Services better”. You can choose “Yes” to contribute your voice clips – or “No” if you don’t want to contribute.

Now you know how to save yourself a lot of typing whether you’re using Windows 10 or 11.