How to Speak So Speech-to-Text Stays Clean

Speak in whole sentences at a normal pace

Speech models predict words from surrounding context, so the single biggest accuracy habit is giving them a full sentence to work with. Fragments strip the context that resolves ambiguous sounds, which is why dictating three words at a time produces worse results than dictating a paragraph.

• Decide the sentence before you start speaking it, then say all of it.
• Keep your conversational pace. Over-enunciation hurts more than it helps.
• Pause between sentences rather than in the middle of one.
• Keep volume steady to the end of the sentence, since trailing off costs the last few words.

Instead of talking while you think, think for a beat and then talk. Two seconds of planning replaces ten seconds of editing, and the drafts come out sounding more like your writing because each sentence was finished before it was spoken.

Fix a wrong word without breaking the take

Everyone misspeaks. Stopping the mic, deleting, and starting over costs time and breaks the thread of what you were saying. Correct in speech instead and keep moving:

You said: "we ship Tuesday, sorry, Wednesday"

Auri typed: "We ship Wednesday."

• Say the correction plainly and continue.
• Restate the whole clause rather than a single word when the phrasing went sideways.
• Do not narrate meta commentary such as delete that, since it may end up in the text.
• Trust the cleanup pass and check the result once at the end.

Auri Voice's cleanup pass resolves spoken self-corrections like this on Mac. On iPhone, hold the Auri Keyboard mic and pick Clean, because the default Raw mode types the literal transcript with both versions in it. Practice the habit deliberately for a day; restarting after every slip is what makes dictation slow, and correcting in speech keeps the take moving.

Punctuation: say it only where it matters

Older dictation required narrating every mark, and that habit lingers. Modern tools add sentence punctuation on their own: Apple Dictation has auto-punctuated since iOS 16, and Auri's cleanup pass fixes punctuation as part of its job. Saying period after every sentence wastes effort and makes your delivery stilted.

In Auri Voice, spoken marks such as comma and question mark convert through Auto-convert punctuation, under Settings > Dictation > Text and on by default. Test your own tool with one paragraph before you commit to a habit: dictate it once with no spoken punctuation and once with full narration, then compare the editing time. Most people find the first version needs less work, which frees attention for the checks that require a human.

Names, numbers, and terms your model has never seen

Proper nouns are the errors that survive cleanup, because a wrong name is still a real word. These are worth handling deliberately, since they repeat in every message you write.

1. Add recurring names, products, and internal terms to a custom word list. In Auri Voice that is Settings > Dictation > Text > Vocabulary, and entries work with every engine.
2. Say numbers in natural groups: fourteen fifty rather than one four five zero.
3. Speak dates the way you write them and check the weekday afterward.
4. For an unfamiliar name, say it once and fix it by hand rather than repeating it three times.
5. Type identifiers: email addresses, URLs, file paths, and codes.

The custom word list pays back more than anything else here. Five minutes adding twenty names and terms removes a category of correction you would otherwise make daily for months. Do it as soon as your microphone setup works.

Fix the room before you blame the model

A close, consistent microphone in a quiet-enough room does more for accuracy than any engine change, and it costs nothing.

• Get the mic six to twelve inches from your mouth, off to the side rather than directly in front.
• Pick one input device and stop switching between AirPods, laptop mic, and a webcam.
• Turn off steady noise you control: a desk fan, a nearby speaker, a rattling vent.
• Speak across the mic, not into it, so plosives do not clip.
• In a cafe, turn away from the loudest source and accept shorter takes.

If you dictate on the move, a close mic matters even more. The Apple Watch works well here because your wrist sits inches from your mouth, and with Auri Voice that audio is encrypted in transit and transcribed locally on the Mac.

A five-minute practice script

Spend five minutes once, in Notes, where nothing you say matters.

1. Dictate a three-sentence paragraph about your day with no spoken punctuation.
2. Dictate the same paragraph and deliberately misspeak once, correcting in speech.
3. Dictate a sentence with two colleague names, a price, and a date.
4. Dictate a four-item list, saying comma between items.
5. Read all four results and note which errors survived.

The surviving errors are your real task list. If names failed, build the word list. If the last words of sentences vanished, work on volume and breath. If punctuation was wrong inside lists, adjust how much you narrate. Re-run the script after a week and you will see which habits stuck, which is more useful than judging a tool by a single frustrating afternoon.

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