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Last week, Google appear it has added free speech-to-text capabilities to Google Docs (Google calls it Vocalization Typing). This would accept been huge news 20 years ago, yet when Google unveiled information technology, it was simply described in a single paragraph in a middle of a larger blog entry. In a world with Apple tree'southward Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google At present, a free speech-to-text service that works on multiple calculating platforms may not seem like big news anymore.

Phonation Typing is dissimilar, though; information technology's kind of a congenital-in version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking (for those of you lot who remember and/or still use that program).googledocs_stt_iosVoice Typing works in Chrome on the desktop, as well as the Docs apps for Apple tree iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android.

Here's how it works: To start voice typing on an iOS device, tap the microphone icon to the left of the spacebar nearly the bottom of the screen. Tap the microphone icon on the right side of the screen above the on-screen keyboard to start Voice Typing on an Android telephone or tablet. If you want to voice blazon on a Mac or Windows PC, you need to use Google Docs in a Chrome spider web browser. And so, select Tools > Vox Typing. Yous will come across a microphone icon appear with the tool tip "Click to speak" appear in the browser screen about your Docs document.

Google Docs Vocalisation Typing currently supports 48 languages, including regional variants of Chinese, English language, Portuguese, and Castilian. Yous exercise not need to perform whatsoever kind of training before using Voice Typing, and it doesn't appear to need a special microphone. For this article, I used the congenital-in microphones of my Dell Windows notebook, a Nexus 6, and an iPhone 6+ to test Google'due south voice communication-to-text.

googledocs_stt_android

Voice Typing does require yous speak words to add punctuation: "Period", "Comma", "Exclamation point", "Question marker", "New line", and "New paragraph." Unlike dedicated speech-to-text systems, Voice Typing does not take a way to right or change text using simply your voice. With Phonation Typing left turned on, y'all must use your keyboard (concrete or on-screen) to make changes to text.

In addition to my regular voice, I tested how well Voice Typing would work on truly continuous speech communication by playing a Stephen Colbert video on YouTube into the microphone of my Nexus 6 telephone running the Google Docs app. Google Docs recorded 288 words using Vox Typing past the time I pressed the Pause button. It looked like it did a credible task of performing oral communication-to-text of a person speaking relatively fast. My crude guess is that it was about 85 to 90% right. And, of class, there is no punctuation, since you need to really speak the punctuation marks for it to appear in the document.

googledocs_stt_chromebrowser

One tip: Vocalization Typing doesn't like it when you swear. For instance, If I say, "What the f***?", it volition censor the text of the censored word. This was, appropriately enough, first noted in a blog about the linguistics of swearing.

I started, but didn't cease, writing this article using Vox Typing. Unless you are a smoothen ad-lib speaker (I am non), it is non the fastest way to write more than a few sentences of text. And, like all speech-to-text systems, it works all-time in a relatively quiet environment. I'm not sure if I volition employ Voice Typing regularly. I tin can see myself using it to brand a few notes on my phone. And it may be interesting to encounter how well it performs in an interview situation with multiple people.