Basically, the natural language commands are a set of command and control phrases which allow you to format your document in Microsoft Word. There are over half a billion different phrases in the command set for Microsoft Word 97 in version 3.0 of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. This means that most of the time, when you say something which seems like it would be a command, it is.
For example, to underline a section of text, you could do any of the following things:
-- "Underline That"
-- "Underline Next Three Words"
-- "Make the Last Three Words Underlined"
-- "Format the Selection Underlined"
-- "Turn It Underlined"
-- etc.
In general, Dragon's natural language commands cover most text and paragraph formatting, plus some other additional functionality like creating tables and changing margins.
The natural language commands are currently restricted to Microsoft Word 97. They are not available in WordPerfect or in Dragon NaturallySpeaking's own editor. They all available, however, in all versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
The natural language commands are implemented using a combination of grammars in the global.dvc file, and a special DLL which interfaces with Microsoft Word. This means that users of the Professional Edition of Dragon NaturallySpeaking can modify what you say to make the formatting occur or add additional commands with similar syntax.
At a future time, I will list all of the different things that you can say in Dragon NaturallySpeaking's natural language commands for Microsoft Word 97. For now, I will simply list the types of font styles which are available (which give you an example of the types of things that you can do).
FontStyle =
 |
"Black", "Blue", "Bright Green", "Dark Blue", "Dark Red", "Dark Yellow", "Gray", "Green", "Pink", "Red", "Teal", "Turquoise", "Violet", "White", "Yellow", "No Highlight", "Bold", "Bolded", "Bolding", "Double Strike Through", "Embossed", "Engraved", "Hidden", "Italics", "Italicized", "Shadowed", "Superscript", "Subscript", "Underline", "Underlined", "Double Underlined", "Wavy Underlined", "Thick Underlined", "Strike Through", "Bigger", "Larger", "Smaller", "Much Bigger", "Much Larger", "Much Smaller", "a Little Bigger", "a Little Larger", "a Little Smaller", "a Lot Bigger", "a Lot Larger", "a Lot Smaller", "Normal", "Default", "Plain", "Plain Text", "Regular", "Lowercase", "No Caps", "Initial Caps", "Capitals", "Capitalized", "Caps", "Uppercase", or "Small Caps" |
ParaStyle =
|
"Centered", "Center Aligned", "Left Aligned", "Right Aligned", "Left Justified", "Right Justified", "Justified", "Indented", "Outdented", "Bulleted", "Numbered", "a Bulleted List", "a Numbered List", "Bullet Style", "Single Spaced", "Double Spaced", "One Column", "Two Column", "Two Columns", "Three Column", "Three Columns", "Four Column", "Four Columns", "Five Column", or "Five Columns" |
Personal opinion: In general, I find the natural language commands useful, but somewhat overrated. Having natural language commands does not solve the fundamental problem that if you do not know what something is called, you can not effect it. For example, if you do not know that drawing a line through text is called "strike through", then you will be unable to format the text this way. Saying "Draw a Line through the Next Three Words" does not work.
On the other hand, Dragon has gone to great lengths to make the command set intuitive once you know some of the basic commands. For example, I know that beginning the natural language commands with the word "Make", followed by the name of some object followed by the name of some formatting style will almost always work. So, therefore, there is very little that I have to remember.
Also, I find that using the numbered objects is not very useful. For example, I almost never say "Capitalize the Next Three Words", because I am never sure that I counted the words properly. Instead, with Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 3.0, you'll find that the most useful way to format your text is to use the command "Select <text> Through <text>", followed by a command which begins "Make That <style>".
In general, the natural language commands work very well. Most of this is because of the improved discrimination between commands and dictation in Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 3.0. If you say a command, it will almost always recognize as a command and execute. On the other hand, if you say something which is like a command but is not exactly a command, it will almost always type. And this is the expected behavior.
Sometime in the future, I will give you a complete list of the Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 3.0 natural language commands for Microsoft Word 97. I will also give some more tips on their use.