Here’s a list of a few of the many voice commands you can use with Google Docs voice typing: Similar to punctuations, Google Docs also lets you use voice commands to perform certain formatting operations in your documents. List of supported punctuations in Google Docs Voice Typing: So if you’d like to, say, write a sentence with an exclamation mark, you simply need to say “exclamation mark” where you want it in the sentence. To prevent this from happening, Docs’ voice typing includes punctuation support, enabling you to speak out punctuation names and add them to your sentences. Not to mention, it can change the meaning of sentences at times.

This allows you to see if your dictated text is transcribed correctly, so if Docs is unable to follow up with your speech correctly, you can alter your pace or pronunciations.Īlthough text dictated this way is fine, not adding punctuations to your sentences can make them hard to read and understand. To do this, click the microphone button in the voice typing window, and then start dictating your text using clear pronunciations and at a normal pace.Īs you do so, Docs will transcribe your speech into written text in the document in real-time. But if you want, you can change the document languages by tapping on the dropdown menu beside the existing language and selecting your preferred language from the menu.Īfter you’ve activated voice typing, you can now start dictating text in Docs. By default, Google Docs uses your system language as the default language for dictation.Click on the Allow button in the permission prompt to grant access. If this is your first time using voice dictation in Docs on Chrome, you’ll be asked to grant Chrome permission to access your microphone.Tap on the microphone icon in this window when you’re ready to start dictating text. A window with a microphone icon will appear over your document.Open a new document or an existing one and click on Tools > Voice typing.Visit Google Docs in the Google Chrome browser.Activate Google Docs Voice Typingįirst up, you need to activate voice typing inside Docs. After speaking a sentence it just magically appears in the document on my screen.Step 1. When demonstrating this to others I first open a Google Doc on my computer, then open the same doc on my phone.

I have to admit that it is pretty cool to watch. Once finished your text will appear in the document. Find your document and open it, then simply click the microphone button available on most mobile keyboards and begin speaking. Either visit Google Drive through a web browser or the mobile app and sign in. To access, simply open a Google Doc and click Tools - Voice Typing. Recently Google introduced its own speech to text tool in Google Docs called Voice Typing. I’ve watched my 8 year old daughter ask Siri (Apple’s personal assistant) a question on her iPad, then see the written version of her question displayed on the screen while Siri repeats it followed by a list of possible answers. Finding these 3 things together in a classroom setting did not happen often.įast forward to today where many schools have access to iPads, smartphones and other technologies that have excellent speech to text utilities built in. In addition, effective use required a decent microphone, quiet space, and sometimes sophisticated software being installed on the computer. Younger students, or students with reading disabilities often struggled with this. For example, being able to use the software was highly dependent on students being able to read large quantities of text for training purposes. This is partly due to the difficulty users had getting the software to understand their voice. In classroom settings, speech to text has been an often sought after, yet rarely used tool.

Google docs speech to text voice typing