I picked up Dragon Naturally Speaking because I got a great deal on it. I'd guessed it wouldn't be something I'd write my stories in because there's something about the act of typing that spurs my creativity, but I figured it would come in useful on other things. Maybe. Did I mention it was a great deal?
It came with a headset and microphone, lucky for me, so I could immediately use it. The first thing to do was train it. I'd heard from other people who had the program that getting it to understand what you're saying can be a little time consuming at first, but once it's setup, it's very accurate. There's a choice of entries to read for Dragon to learn what you're saying. I thought I'd be doing more than one, but it didn't want more.
To give the program its due, it was remarkably accurate after reading that one passage to train it. There were a few other word glitches, but I could just do that one word and Dragon would learn it.
Until I hit the F word.
While I didn't think I'd use it for writing, I still wanted that option. To that end, I was reading one of my Works In Progress (WIP) into the program. Just in case. It balked at the F bomb.
I tried to train it on that word. Nope.
I tried again. And again. And again. No matter how many times I tried to get Dragon to type the F word when I spoke it, it wouldn't. Everything and anything except that word. It became frustrating and ridiculous and Dragon won--I gave up.
Some day, when I feel more ready for battle, I'll fight with Dragon to type the F word again, but for now, I'll just have to type it in.
PS: I did figure out what to use Dragon for--transcribing my notes from my notebook into the computer. It will save me a lot of typing and I don't use the F word in any of my notes. ;-)
