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NatSpeak boilerplate Text and Graphics commands allow you to insert any text or graphics into a document using a single speech command. These commands can be very powerful — they’re good for adding text and graphics that you use often, such as your address or a set of directions.

The NatSpeak Vocabulary editor allows you to add words or phrases to your vocabulary that have different spoken and written forms. This allows you to make words like your email address easily pronounceable.

The key to using boilerplate and vocabulary commands is being able to remember them.

There are two ways to make these types of commands easy to remember:

1. Word them consistently

2. Make them easy to look up

I find the easiest way to remember boilerplate Text and Graphics commands is to simply say the first part of the text you’re inserting followed by “Full”. So “Redstart Full” prints the full name and address of Redstart Systems. If you have two different versions of the address, add a number. “Redstart Full 1″ prints the same address in a different format.

You can use the Utter Command Clipboard facility to make anything easy to look up. Once you name your Text and Graphics command say “Line Copy To” followed by the name of the UC Clipboard file and you’ve got it recorded. For example, to keep your boilerplate commands in “UC List 1″ say “Line Copy To List 1″.

Now any time you want to consult your list of commands say “List 1 File”. You can also print it out.

I also use the start-to-say method for vocabulary words that have different written and spoken forms. I’ve put my Redstart email address in as a vocabulary word with the spoken form “Kim at Red” and my Gmail address in as a vocabulary word with the spoken form “Kim at G Mail” (in address commands I use “Kim” whether or not the actual address is just Kim or something longer).

One caution in using vocabulary in this way — make sure commands are at least two words and make sure the two words are not a common phrase that you’d want to say as is. If you need to, use the “Full” method above to avoid this problem. Also make sure to save your user after adding vocabulary words.

If you wish, keep vocabulary words that have different written and spoken forms on the same list as your boilerplate commands.

The difference between boilerplate commands and written/spoken vocabulary words is a block of boilerplate is returned exactly as written, while vocabulary commands are treated like words, with appropriate spacing before and after them.

UC Commands Tip: say “NatSpeak” followed by the first one or two words in a NatSpeak dialog box title to call up that dialog box.

Commands for the dialog boxes mentioned above:

“NatSpeak My Commands” calls up the NatSpeak My Commands dialog box where you can write a boilerplate Text and Graphics macro

“NatSpeak Vocabulary” calls up the NatSpeak Vocabulary Editor dialog box

Question: when you’re looking for a website you’ve been to before, but haven’t put it on your UC List or in your bookmarks, what’s the fastest way to get back to it?

I’ve got a two-step solution for you, assuming you’re starting in an open browser. It works the same in Firefox and Internet Explorer.

1. Combine the command that puts the cursor in the address bar with the first two letters of whatever you’re looking for. If I’m looking for the Evite site, for instance for instance, I would say “Under Delta e v”

2. If the first choice is what you want say “Down Enter” to finish the job, if it’s the second choice “2 Down Enter” etc.

The second fastest way to look up a word in a dictionary using Utter Command is to select the word, then say “This Dictionary Search”. This command looks up the selection in dictionary.com and returns the results in a browser page.

The fastest way is to combine selecting the word and searching. For instance, “Word Dictionary Search”.

You can use these commands whether or not a browser is open.

Happy searching.

Whenever I talk to people who use speech commands to control a computer I encourage them to complain. Something that frequently comes up is it’s a drag having to say “page down” so much.

We’ve come up with several ways to diminish the drag:

1. Several screens at once

First, “Page” is a back-of the-mouth word, which is more difficult to say than words that only use sounds that originate in the front of the mouth. This isn’t a problem for commands you don’t use frequently, but looms large when you have to repeat something over and over again.

And when you say “Page Down”, you’re really moving by screen, not by page. This is fortunate, because “Screen” is easier to say than “page”.

Using Utter Command you can say “Page Down” and “Page Up” to hit the page up and page down keys, but you can also say “Screen Down” and “Screen Up”. And you can move multiple screens: “2 Screen Down”, “5 Screen Up”

2. Right to the point

You can also go to a given screen. “Screen 3″, for instance, jumps you right to the third screen of information in a document.

And in programs whose Find facilities recognize page numbers, including pdf’s, you can go right to a given page by saying, for instance, “Find Page 22″. You can try this out on a UC lesson document: “UC Lesson 1″.

3. Wait

It’s still tedious to say “Screen Down” every couple of seconds when you want to glance quickly at subsequent pages. Try this: “3 Screen Down Wait 5″. This moves down a screen, waits 5 seconds, moves down another screen, waits 5 seconds, then moves down another screen.

4. The right tool for the job

It’s also important to look at exactly why you’re going through a document screen by screen. Often you’re looking through pages for a certain section. In this case the screen-by-screen facility isn’t the right tool for the job, but you may be using it because usually it’s the best tool available.

If you’re looking through a document that has numbers, letters or symbols to differentiate sections you can use the UC Keywords facility go directly to any of these. To see what I mean say “Find 1 Period”, “Find 3 Period” in this document. Now picture a longer document with more and longer sections, and a section outline along these lines:

2. Speech Command

You could say, for example “Find 1 Period”, “Find 1 Point 1″, “Find 1 Point 2″ and “Find 2 period” to jump among these sections.

Using the UC Keyword list you can use any section organization scheme you want — numbers, letters, numbers and letters (1a., 1b….) or heading words themselves (“Find Introduction”, “Find Summary”). Sometimes I put tildas (~) at key points in a document so I can jump to those points (“Find Tilde”). I also use the word “PLACEHOLDER” this way (“Find Placeholder”).

You can also use “Wait” with keywords. I use this one to scan a document for placeholders: “Find Placeholder Wait 2 Repeat 5″.

Here’s another simple one.

Tabs in a browser act just like documents in a program like Word.

To close several tabs at once say, for instance, “Document Close Times 4″

This is a simple one.

When you’re in Windows Explorer and want to make a new folder, say

Under f w f (or Under Foxtrot Whiskey Foxtrot)

This will leave you all set to name the folder.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about filling out forms using speech commands.

Here’s how it works:

The UC Keyword List allows you to say “Find” followed by any word or phrase to select that word or phrase in any program that has a Find dialog box. This includes Firefox and Internet Explorer. You can combine the word-finding ability with the Tab key to go straight to any field. For example, “Find First Tab” puts your cursor in the “First Name” field.

To see the forms facility in action, take this self-guided tour:
“Demo 2 File”
“Find Address Tab”
44 State St.
“Find Phone Tab”
555-555-5555

The Keyword List comes loaded with common key words and phrases. Say “Add Keyword” to add your own (say “UC Lesson 10.1″ for detailed instructions).

It’s easy to remove formatting from selected text in a Word document — “Control Space”, but what do you do in programs that don’t have this function?

There’s not a keyboard shortcut for removing formatting in Google documents, but here’s a two-step way to get the job done. You can copy the text to one of the UC Clipboard files, which will save it as .txt, then paste the plain text from that file.

Here’s the sequence:

Removing formatting from selected text in a Google document
Copy to 1 File
1 File Paste

You can speed things up by selecting text and copying to a UC clipboard file in one step. Here are a couple of examples:

Selecting text and removing its formatting in a Google document
Line Copy to 1 File
1 File Paste

or

2 Graphs · Copy to 1 File
1 File Paste

It’s important to save documents you’re working on (say “Control s”), but it’s all too easy to get absorbed in what you are writing and forget to save.

Here are a couple of commands that make this easier:

Making a new line and saving in one step
Enter · Control s

Making a paragraph and saving in one step
2 Enter · Control s

Keyboard shortcuts are powerful tools for the speech interface because they work across all programs and they can be combined — you can say several keyboard shortcuts in one phrase to speed things up.

This is why we encourage all software makers to make all features available via keyboard shortcuts.

Google is experimenting with adding keyboard shortcuts to search results. Here are the experimental keyboard shortcuts:

And here’s how to speed things up further with Utter Command combinations:

To try these out

1. Go to the Google experimental page www.google.com/experimental/1
2. Under the Keyboard Shortcuts heading click “Join Experiment”
3. Go to regular Google search www.google.com2 or Advanced Google search www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en3, type a query, then try the shortcuts on the results.

As long as you’re logged in you’ll be able to use these shortcuts in the regular and advanced Google search pages.

Note: the Join Experiment button uses cookies. If your browser is set to remove all cookies at the end of a session and you want to retain this setting add www.google.com to your exceptions list (Firefox: Tools/Options/Privacy/Exceptions; Internet Explorer: Tools/Options/Privacy/Sites).