C H A P T E R 2
Using Dragon NaturallySpeaking Successfully
Dragon NaturallySpeaking User’s Guide
22
About the vocabulary
The Dragon NaturallySpeaking vocabulary contains the words the
program is capable of recognizing when you say them. The vocabulary
contains thousands of words, their common pronunciations, and
language data about how frequently words are used alone and in
combination with others.
When you first start Dragon NaturallySpeaking, it creates a standard
vocabulary on your computer. A vocabulary contains active words (the
active vocabulary) and backup words (the backup dictionary).
Active words
The most commonly used vocabulary words are kept active (stored in
computer memory). When you dictate these words, Dragon
NaturallySpeaking is likely to get them right on the first try (that is,
without requiring you to do anything extra such as correcting the words).
For example, all the words in the following sentence are active
(including “Pennsauken”), so Dragon NaturallySpeaking should be able
to recognize them all correctly on the first try.
Meet me in Pennsauken [comma] New Jersey
Don’t worry that the words you want to say won’t be active. The list of
active words is very long and continually changes (as you correct
mistakes) to always include words you’re likely to use.
Backup dictionary words
All the vocabulary words that are not currently active are kept in the
backup dictionary (stored on disk, not in memory). Dragon
NaturallySpeaking can recognize backup dictionary words, but not on
the first try.
If Dragon NaturallySpeaking has trouble recognizing a word, it may
mean that it’s a backup dictionary word. You can make a word active by
correcting it in the Correction dialog box.
