How to dictate punctuation on a Mac
· 6 min read
Say the name of the mark and macOS types it: “period”, “comma”, “question mark”, “open parenthesis”, “new line”. On current versions you often do not need to, because dictation infers commas and periods from your pauses and your intonation. The arrangement that works is to let it punctuate ordinary prose on its own, and to say marks out loud only where being exact matters: a list, an address, a line of anything structured.
First, know whether it is punctuating for you
macOS dictation adds punctuation automatically in supported languages. Speak two sentences with a clear stop between them and you will get a period, a capital letter and a second sentence, without saying anything.
The switch for this lives with the rest of the dictation settings: System Settings, Keyboard, Dictation. If your Mac offers an auto-punctuation control there and you turn it off, nothing is inserted unless you say it. Most people leave it on. Turning it off is worth trying if you write in a style where the inferred commas are consistently in the wrong place, which happens more with technical writing than with email.
Whichever way you set it, the spoken commands below still work. They override the guess.
The marks you can say
These are the ones worth committing to memory, because they cover almost everything you will dictate.
Ending sentences
- “period” gives
. - “question mark” gives
? - “exclamation point” gives the exclamation mark
- “new line” moves to the next line, like pressing Return once
- “new paragraph” leaves a blank line, like pressing Return twice
Inside sentences
- “comma” gives
, - “colon” gives
: - “semicolon” gives
; - “hyphen” gives
- - “ellipsis” or “dot dot dot” gives
... - “open parenthesis” and “close parenthesis” give
(and) - “open bracket” and “close bracket” give
[and] - “quote” and “end quote” wrap a quotation; “open quote” and “close quote” also work
Symbols
- “at sign” gives
@ - “percent sign” gives
% - “dollar sign” gives
$ - “ampersand” gives
& - “asterisk” gives
* - “underscore” gives
_ - “forward slash” gives
/ - “backslash” gives
\ - “degree sign” gives the degree symbol
Say them at the pace of the sentence rather than as separate announcements. “The invoice is overdue comma so I have paused the work period” produces the right thing; a pause before each command tends to make dictation treat it as ordinary text.
Capitalization, spacing and numbers
These are the commands people never learn and then use constantly.
- “cap” capitalizes the next word
- “caps on” and “caps off” capitalize the first letter of every word in between, which is how you dictate a title
- “all caps” makes the next word uppercase
- “all caps on” and “all caps off” bracket a run of uppercase
- “no caps” forces the next word lowercase, useful for a name that starts with a small letter
- “no space” joins the next word to the previous one, and “no space on” and “no space off” bracket a run
- “numeral” forces the next number to appear as digits rather than words
The last two are the ones that turn a frustrating dictation into a working one. “No space on” through a run of words is how you get a compound identifier out of your mouth and onto the screen without touching the keyboard.
When you want the word, not the mark
There is no reliable way to tell macOS dictation that you meant the word “period” as a word. Dictate “the period between the two releases” and you may well get a full stop in the middle of your sentence.
Three practical responses, in the order most people end up using them:
- Rephrase. “The stretch between the two releases” costs nothing and avoids the collision entirely. Same for “comma” and “dash” as nouns.
- Type the word. Stop dictation, type the offending word, start again. Faster than fixing it afterwards.
- Fix it after. Dictate the whole passage, then read it back once and repair the two or three places where a command word was taken literally, or a literal word was taken as a command.
The same trap catches “new line” in a sentence about a new line of products, and “quote” in a sentence about a quote from a supplier. It is worth knowing which words in your own vocabulary are landmines. Dictation on a Mac covers the rest of the built-in system’s limits.
Where automatic punctuation reliably guesses wrong
Lists. Spoken lists come out as one long sentence with commas in the wrong places. Say “new line” between items and punctuate the items yourself.
Long sentences with subordinate clauses. A pause for breath becomes a comma; a pause for thought becomes a period. If you write long sentences, expect to rejoin them.
Questions that do not sound like questions. “I wonder whether you could send that over” is a request with falling intonation, so it gets a period. That is usually correct, but if you want a question mark, say it.
Email addresses and URLs. These are the worst case in any dictation system, and the honest answer is not to dictate them. Put the ones you use often into System Settings, Keyboard, Text Replacements so a short trigger expands to the full address, then type the trigger. Text replacements sync to your iPhone and iPad through iCloud, so this is worth doing once.
Anything with a code in it. Order numbers, ticket references, version strings. Type them.
Getting punctuation right in a dictation app
Dictation apps take a different approach to the same problem: rather than making you say every mark, they infer punctuation from pauses and sentence shape, then let you say the ones that matter. Voice Keyboard Pro works that way, with the usual spoken commands (“period”, “new line” and similar) available on top of the inference, plus a personal vocabulary so names and project codes stop coming out as approximations.
It does not solve the word-versus-mark problem, because nothing does; if you say “period” it will assume you meant the mark. What it changes is the shape of the work: with a held key you punctuate by releasing at the end of a thought, which does more for readable output than any list of commands. Hold-to-talk dictation covers why.
Questions
Do the commands differ by language? Yes. The command words are the ones from the language you are dictating in, not translations of the English ones, and the set is not identical across languages. If a command is being typed as text rather than acted on, check which language dictation is set to.
Can I dictate a bulleted list? Not as formatting. Dictation types text, so it will produce the words and the line breaks but not the bullets; the app you are typing into may convert a leading hyphen into a bullet on its own. Say “new line”, then “hyphen”, then the item.
Why did my quotation marks come out curly? That is autocorrect in the receiving app, not dictation. System Settings, Keyboard, Text Input, Edit has a smart quotes setting, and most writing apps have their own version of it.
Is there a command to delete what I just said? Not in plain dictation. Editing commands such as delete that, select all and undo that belong to Voice Control, in System Settings, Accessibility. Dictation on its own only types.