Microsoft is adding new features and interface to Dictation in Word for Windows. Voice commands, auto punctuation and even a !@$#$ profanity filter.
Clicking the Dictation button on the Home tab or pressing Alt + ` now opens a dialog at bottom center of the document. It will start ‘Listening’ right away.
Tap on the microphone icon to pause dictation.
Use the Settings icon to see some more options.
Auto punctuation
Word will add comma, fullstop etc as it thinks best. It saves you having to speak the punctuation and is handy for more free-flowing speech.
Auto punctuation defaults off.
Voice Commands
There are punctuation, symbol, math, currency, editing, formatting and list commands available in modern Office Dictation.
See the full searchable list of Voice Commands or the dedicated chapter in our ebook Dictation and Read Aloud in Office.
Dictation and Read Aloud in Office is our complete guide to the speech features in Microsoft Office for Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android.
Profanity filter
Any naughty words spoken are replaced by asterix, a ‘star’ for each letter of the profane word.
Microsoft decides what’s a profanity and what’s OK. We tried stubbing a toe while dictating to discover that all the usual suspects get bleeped out – the F, C (x 2) and S words for starters. As you can see above, a few minor words are deemed OK.
Religious names, which could be considered profane or blasphemous in some contexts, are allowed.
What is Microsoft’s thinking behind the profanity filter? Do they really want to get into the business of deciding what words are wicked? Perhaps it’s there for the education market? Word’s grammar and style feature already has an ‘offensive words’ test that will warn users of questionable words in the text (see ‘damn’ above). Censoring spoken words seems unnecessary, unless they are trying to protect the virtue of their cloud based ‘speech to text’ AI <g>.
Office 365 users can have fun testing the profanity filter to see what’s considered ‘naughty’ in various languages. Please let us know what you discover.
Spoken language
In April 2022, Microsoft updated the Dictation language list. 25 new languages were added and some from the Preview list were promoted to fully supported.
See 25 new languages added to Microsoft Office Dictation
Dictation and Read Aloud in Office
Word Online gets Dictation – type with your voice
Dictate voice commands – the full, searchable list
Dictate into documents with Word 365 for Mac
