Yesterday, after reading Joseph’s blog post concerning Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 voice recognition software, I decided to order myself a copy and give it a go.
I have used voice recognition software in the past (mainly IBM’s earlier products) and found it actually extremely useful and surprisingly workable, at least when compared to the alternatives — a keyboard being rather difficult for me to use, as I have limited upper body movement. A couple of years ago, however, I switched to using handwriting recognition on a Pocket PC, finding it a little slower, but somehow more natural in the way it felt.
Given my current workrate, however, I have felt that the handwriting recognition system has been holding me back somewhat. Hence my deciding to give this a go again.
And, boy, has voice recognition improved in the past couple of years! The speed and efficiency of it is remarkable. It demands little of the system, other software working away merrily at the same time without any clashes. The recognition rate is, as claimed, in the region of 99%. Correcting the few mistakes it makes is quick and easy — and improves recognition vastly.
As you may have guessed, I’m actually using it to write this. I’ve made only a couple of corrections, it’s taken me a matter of minutes, and I’ve hardly had to move at all!
Remarkable.
Now, however, I’m faced with something of a dilemma. I have only a couple of chapters — three, actually, now that I think of it — to finish on the Children of the Resolution, and I can’t make my mind up whether to use this to complete it, or stick with the handwriting recognition. This might strike you as not being all that much of a problem at all, but my concern is that it may alter the tone of my work, however slightly. I have read through some of my early work, the stuff I wrote using voice recognition, and I don’t really think it will be an issue — not if they are anything to go by. In my earlier work, I sound pretty much the same as I do in my current project, but…
Maybe you can help. Having read the above, answer me this: do I still sound like me? 🙂
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