Purge Your Personal Vocabulary

By Karl Barksdale

Speaking Solutions, Inc. © 2002

Everyone we talk to about 6.0 says that accuracy has improved over 5.0. This improvement happens in part because of a new Dragon technology. NaturallySpeaking 6.0 engineers have pushed the envelope in learning how people speak and use words. The software is now thinking all of the time. It's a new, intuitive approach, but it can add some annoying words to your personal user vocabulary. Here's an example of a word that was added to my dictionary and how I fixed it.

I was creating an Excel spreadsheet lesson and capitalized the word "Count" in the correction window while describing the Count function. The word began to appear capitalized in my normal dictation, for example, "You'll need to Count the number of words and divide by 5 to determine wpm." This demonstrated that Dragon is trying to learn the way I use that word in normal speech, but, being a computer, it got it wrong.

There are two ways to correct this:

(A) Select the mistake and CHOOSE the alternative that is capitalized correctly. Do this a few times, and the software learns that you don't want this word capitalized.

(B) A better way to correct a mistake is to purge your personal user vocabulary from time to time. This is easily done.

1. Choose Tools.
2. Choose Accuracy Center.
3. Choose View or Edit Your Vocabulary
4. In the display box at the bottom of the screen, choose Display: Custom Words Only

5. Review the list and delete any words that are obvious problems.

We recommend performing this check about once a month or if you run into a word that is getting in the way of your dictation. As you do, you may notice word fragments that may have been added to your vocabulary. For example, I once found the letter "p" and the letters "ch" in my list. These are added when Dragon NaturallySpeaking doesn't know what to do with a corrected sound fragment. While I have never had any of these fragments appear in my dictation, it's probably a good idea to delete them.