Sleepless in the Car

A Test Run

I'm experimenting with a new process. A few weeks ago Sarah was doing her homework and informed me that Google Docs had the ability to do voice typing. Now, on my computer Windows has a voice typing feature and I have attempted to use it several times. My success was limited and fraught with frustration. I attempted writing with it and found that many words had to be corrected and it just did not work well at all. The program requires extensive training and that takes time. And I'm not sure it would work any better. It only works within certain programs. For example, you can give it commands to do certain Windows actions and you can use it in Wordpad and Notepad. I cannot use it in Scrivener and I was unable to find out how to use it in LibreOffice.

So when I found that Google Docs have the same feature I decided to see how well it worked. I'm now on my second paragraph and I admit that I think it is better than the windows version. Of course, it is limited to Google Docs. Although I still have to correct some word errors it has to do with pronunciation. I expect problems in that area since it is a computer assessing my speech patterns.

I'd like to try to use this on days when I do not feel well and can't sit and type. I can see one major problem. I seem to get frustrated when I have to go back and correct it or it doesn't put anything remotely like what I said. That was my complaint with the windows voice typing feature. It appears on first use that this particular feature in Google Docs is working better. I see fewer mistakes over the course of the page than I did when I was using the windows version of voice transcription.

So that being said, I have one more excuse taken from me in regard to my writing.This probably a good thing.  

I do think that Google should put a button on the menu bar that will allow you to access the voice typing feature rather than having to go to the tools menu scroll down and then select and the button appears on the desktop. However, this is a minor annoyance.

However, I plan to make several attempts using this feature.I will let you know in a future post how this comes out. Just know that this entire document has been done in Google Docs using voice typing.