15 Tips to Avoid Breathing Errors

Speaking Solutions, Inc. © 2004

Controlling an active microphone can frustrate beginners. They often panic if extra words appear out of nowhere. These are often called breathing errors because many are caused by a user breathing on the microphone, either through their nose or mouth.

When breathing errors appear, the likely culprit is an improperly placed or maladjusted headset. However, poor quality sound cards, poor headsets, or changes in the acoustic environment can also cause random words to appear. Here are 15 tips that may help!

1. It's no good to have your microphone too close (or too far away) from your mouth. Start by keeping the windscreen (the sponge at the tip of the microphone) about three quarters of an inch away from your lower lip.

2. Continue moving the listening portion of the microphone slightly further away from your mouth if extra words appear on the screen caused by your breathing.

3. Try not to breathe on the windscreen. Try breathing more through your mouth than through your nose.

4. If possible, move the listening portion of the microphone more to the side of your mouth. This usually helps avoid breathing errors.

5. Never touch the headset while in use. This can also cause extra words appear unnecessary.

6. Try to keep your face slightly elevated when you speak, as if you are talking to a person. Don't talk down into your chest.

7. If you notice a sudden drop in accuracy or performance, or if you can't seem to control breathing errors by following steps 1 through 6, retest your headset by choosing Tools, Accuracy Center, Check Your Audio Settings from the DragonBar. A score of 19 or higher is recommended. However, scores between 16-18 will work. (Note: If you receive an error message that says the headset is too loud, click OK and look at the score. If the score is in the twenties, you should be able to continue without difficulty.)

8. Retest your headset if your acoustic environment changes. This is true if environment both gets louder or much quieter than normal.

9. Have a couple of headsets available for testing purposes. This will allow you to isolate whether or not a headset, sound card, or USB port has become defective.

10. If you suspect headset, test it on another computer you know is working properly. This will help you isolate whether you have a headset or sound card problem.

11. After you find a headset that is working for you, use the same headset every day.

12. Don't forget to hibernate the microphone when you're done speaking. A lot of unnecessary errors appear because someone fails to control their microphone.

13. Park your insertion point at the end of a paragraph (say o MOVE TO END OF PARAGRAPH) so breathing errors can be deleted easily with the o DELETE SENTENCE command.

14. If all else fails, move to a quieter dictation environment. (Or take your speech recognition system out to the middle of a public highway and let human nature do the rest<grin>.)

15. Don't forget to use the SCRATCH THAT command to erase a breathing error.