How do you do new lines and new paragraphs when dictating?

[David Baba]

Hi All,

I guess I am the genius...I came here looking for the answer to the same question....

Say "Period Return" in the same breath without pause and it works..

 

[jess_m]

Hi everyone,

I'm coming to this conversation a bit late. I found this thread because I was having the same issue as the OP, Doug. Good thing I read all the posts because the answer is here after all! It dawned on me when I read the post from Jeremy8000 on page one of this thread, then reading a few of the posts after it.

First of all, I highly suspect that the speech recognition software that runs on Android and, by extension, Google Now is not, in fact, written by Google but rather licensed by them. If that is indeed the case, it would go a long way towards explaining why no one has been able to get a concise answer. Additionally, Google is such a huge and completely opaque organization, I am floored that Doug was able to actually come up with a toll-free support number. That in itself is amazing.

So back to the original problem. My results are from testing on my Galaxy Note II running Android 4.3 and dictating into a Samsung provided app called "S Note" and also "TweetCaster", for my money the best Twitter app out there. Identical results were obtained on my 2013 Nexus 7 running Android 4.4.2 (there used to be a fantastic car called the "442", but that's another thread!) and again dictating into "TweetCaster".

The key words are "return" and "new paragraph" spoken once and at a leisurely pace. In fact, I tried skipping a beat and then speaking "return" and it still worked. You can also skip a beat with "new paragraph". The phrase "new paragraph" works in all circumstances. The word "return" woks ONLY after PUNCTUATION - and PUNCTUATION is the key here. Read Jeremy8000's post on page one and you'll see all his sentences end with punctuation and only then does he speak a formatting command.

You can say "return" as fast as you like and as often as you like, but if it is not preceded by punctuation OF SOME SORT, e.g. "comma", "question mark", "period", "exclamation point", it simply will not work. The speech recognition engine cannot understand why you'd want to go to a new line when you have not terminated the preceding one. As we all know, punctuation terminates sentences.

By contrast, the same engine doesn't seem to care when or where you want to start a new paragraph or under what circumstances. The end result is that you can say "new paragraph" anywhere you want, with or without preceding punctuation, and Android will dutifully skip TWO lines and give you your paragraph.

Hope this helps clear things up!

 

[douglerner]

I have just confirmed that what Jess wrote about "return" being needed immediately after punctuation and "new paragraph" working at least most of the time. But in tests just now I was also running into "new paragraph" not working.

I can also get these punctuation marks to work:

. = period
, = comma
! = exclamation mark
? = question mark
- = dash (but sometimes doesn't work)

I cannot get these punctuation marks to work though: " ( ) :

That's not a complete list I know. But it would be nice if we could fill them in.

doug

 

[Chrissy Wilson1]

Say "new line" twice.

Doug and Gary

Thank you! Sometimes it's the little things like this that make a world of difference. ♥

 

[gsslion]

"New Paragraph" when said together works for me. Well if you give a pause between these words, it types them. You gotta practice a little bit.

Am yet to find out the new line. Will post as soon as I do.

GS

 

[George Stevens]

Personally I've found voice typing anything long more trouble than it is worth because it is such a hassle to correct errors, and there are always errors.

Exactly.

 

[Itscool Really]

I have Android 4.0.4 and have noticed that if you say "rehturn" instead "reeturn" that it will give you a new line regardless of whether or not you said anything prior.

 

[Yddroid]

here is the perfect solution. I have had that same problem for years. Now this is what I have discovered

If you pause for a few seconds and then day "new line"
Then it will give you a new line

Try it!

The Nexus manual says this about punctuation when dictating text:



Not much detail there.

What about new lines, new paragraphs and other punctuation, like quote marks? Is there more info on this?

Thanks,

doug

 

[lesatglsi]

Don't say "new line"
Say "newline"

AND YES it does work

 

[garbonzo17]

Don't say "new line"
Say "newline"

AND YES it does work

 

[garbonzo17]

I'm really glad this was figure out. It was kind of driving me crazy. I was about to post on the first page after I tinkered with it a little bit and figured it out but then I went to the bottom of the second page of comments and so that other people had figured out but it's not next line or some other variation its new line and it seems to have to be after a. Of course. However in this particular message section where I'm doing this all by voice it's not working, but I have some ideas of why that might be working based on the way this comment section's coded. When I tested it and Google Keep not only did NEW LINE work but so did NEW PARAGRAPH.

 

[PsypherMage]

That's very interesting.

Thanks and I agree would be nice to have a full list of commands. As far as percentage of voice recognition I find that's very accurate.

My LG android voice recognition has been going steadily down hill, faster than Dave's HAL 9000 lost it's mind. I was initially amazed, then it degraded to the point where I cannot reliably voice-type anything.

Maybe I need to buy a new phone... And I thought planned obsolescence was good for AT LEAST a few years...