Punctuation and formatting

Automatic punctuation, and what it decides

By default you speak in plain sentences and VoiceSnap Pro punctuates them. It reads phrasing, grammar and the pauses between clauses to place full stops and commas, capitalises the first word of each sentence and any proper nouns it recognises, and ends a question with a question mark whether or not you sounded like you were asking one.

It also normalises the things people say out loud but write differently: “twenty five percent” becomes 25%, “three thirty p m” becomes 3:30 PM, “nineteen eighty four” stays as a year, “dollar sign forty nine” becomes $49, and an email address or URL spoken aloud is written without spaces.

Spoken punctuation

Automatic punctuation does not stop you being explicit. Say the name of a mark and you get the mark, in the middle of an otherwise ordinary sentence.

• period / full stop, comma, question mark, exclamation mark, colon, semicolon.
• hyphen, dash, em dash, ellipsis, ampersand, asterisk, slash, backslash, at sign, hash.
• open quote / close quote, open parenthesis / close parenthesis, open bracket / close bracket.
• new line — moves to the next line. new paragraph — inserts a blank line and starts a fresh paragraph.
• smiley — inserts the emoji, off by default in Settings → Formatting.

When to say it and when to let it decide

For prose — email, messages, documents — say nothing and let automatic punctuation do the work. It is more accurate than most people's spoken punctuation, and constantly saying “comma” breaks the rhythm that makes dictation faster than typing in the first place.

Be explicit when the structure matters more than the sentence: lists, addresses, code comments, anything with brackets or quotation marks, and anywhere a wrong line break would change the meaning. Those are the cases where the model has no phrasing to read.

Line breaks and paragraphs

“New line” gives you a single break; “new paragraph” gives you a blank line and starts the next sentence capitalised. In a chat box where Enter sends the message, both insert a soft break rather than pressing Enter — VoiceSnap Pro will not submit a form for you.

VoiceSnap Pro also breaks paragraphs on its own when you pause for more than about two seconds and start a new thought. If you think in long silences and keep getting split paragraphs, turn automatic paragraph breaks off in Settings → Formatting and use the spoken command instead.

Typing the word instead of the mark

Prefix any punctuation word with “literal” to get the word itself: say “literal comma” to write the word comma. The same prefix works for voice commands, which matters if you write documentation about dictation software.

Quotation marks follow your Settings → Formatting choice of straight or curly quotes. Curly is right for prose; straight is what you want if you dictate into a code editor or a YAML file, where a curly quote is a syntax error.

Filler words and false starts

“Um”, “uh”, “er”, “like” used as a filler, “you know” and “I mean” are removed before the text is inserted. So are stutters and immediate repeats: “the the report” becomes “the report”.

The removal is careful about meaning. “I like this design” keeps its “like”, because it is doing a job in the sentence. If you need the transcript exactly as spoken — for interview notes, legal records or language practice — switch on verbatim mode in Settings → Formatting, which disables both filler-word removal and the repeat collapse.

Formatting settings worth knowing

Settings → Formatting holds the small preferences that decide whether the output needs editing afterwards. Set them once for the kind of writing you do most.

• Automatic punctuation — on by default. Off gives you an unpunctuated stream, which some people prefer for note-taking.
• Automatic paragraph breaks — on by default, triggered by a pause of about two seconds.
• Quote style — curly or straight.
• Numbers — write digits from a threshold you choose, or spell out numbers under ten in the usual prose style.
• Spacing after a full stop — one space by default, two if your house style demands it.
• Verbatim mode — keeps every filler word, repeat and false start.