You use the Auto-Formatting options to set up text formatting that Dragon Group Clients automatically apply to all user dictation, producing consistently formatted reports across the entire organization. Changing these options for a group affects all members of that group exclusively. Customizing the options for a single user's user account affects only that user's dictation.
The Auto-Formatting options activate different forms of automatic formatting. The automatic formats let users dictate in a natural way and also dictate different types of word formats, such as abbreviations, contractions, and e-mail addresses.
These formats do not have the last say on punctuation of numbers and currency; instead, numeric punctuation is ultimately controlled by settings on the Regional Options tab of the Windows Control Panel Regional and Language Options dialog box. (Although the numeric formats are usually standard for the country shown in that dialog box, you can click the Customize... button to find tabs for Numbers and Currency to customize the formats.) NMS Server administrators set General formatting options on the Group Details > Dragon Professional tab. However, users can choose to override Auto-Formatting settings that apply to the documents that result from their dictation.
For more information on how the Auto-Formatting option settings are stored and whose setting of them takes precedence, refer to Setting general auto-formatting options in the client or the Nuance Management Server on page 108.
Setting Auto-Formatting options
On the Group Details > Dragon Professional tab, expand the Auto-Formatting section.
n Abbreviate common English units of measure: Enabled by default.
Automatically inserts abbreviations for units of measure. For example, "mm" for
"millimeter".
n Abbreviate titles: Enabled by default. Inserts abbreviated versions of any title in the default lexicon. For example, "Mr." instead of "Mister."
n Allow pauses in formatted phrases: Enabled by default. Lets number and phrase formatting work together if you pause while speaking a number.
n Automatically add commas and periods: Disabled by default. Automatically adds commas and periods based on pause length and sentence structure.
n Caps Lock key overrides capitalization commands: Disabled by default.
When this option is enabled and the keyboard Caps Lock key is active, several Dragon Group capitalization commands are not active: "Cap <word>", "Caps On", "Caps Off" "All-Caps <word>", "All-Caps On", "All-Caps Off", "No-Caps
<word>", "No-Caps On", and "No-Caps Off".
n Expand common English contractions: Disabled by default. Enables Dragon Group to recognize contractions while transcribing dictation. If you clear this box, Dragon Group transcribes spoken contractions in a more formal manner. For example, if you say "Don't go near the water," Dragon Group transcribes "Do not go near the water."
In some situations, the formal expression of a contraction might be ambiguous.
For example, the phrase "It's always" could either mean "It is always" or "It has always" depending on the tense of the verb that follows. In this situation, Dragon Group always expands the contraction, regardless of how this option is set.
n Format ISO currency codes: Disabled by default. Inserts currency codes rather than currency symbols. For example, "USD10.00" instead of "10 dollars," or
"EUR50,00" instead of "50 euros."
n Format other numbers: Enabled by default. Inserts properly formatted decimals, negative numbers, and fractions. For example, "-1" instead of "negative 1."
n Format phone numbers: Enabled by default. Turns on automatic formatting of US telephone numbers when you speak a sequence of seven or ten numbers. For example, if you say "7815551234", Dragon Group will transcribe "781-555-1234."
n Format prices: Enabled by default. Inserts prices and currencies in the proper format with the appropriate currency symbol. For example, "$10.00" instead of "10 dollars," or " 50,00" instead of "50 euros."
n Format street addresses: Enabled by default. Inserts a properly formatted
Chapter 4: Configuring groups and user accounts
street address. For example:
“One seventy West one hundred south number fifty Salt_Lake_City Utah eight four seven zero zero”
becomes:
“170 W. 100 S., #50, Salt Lake City, UT 84700”
n Format times: Enabled by default. Turns on automatic standard time
formatting. For example, if you say "Six Thirty PM," Dragon Group transcribes
"6:30 PM." Dictating standard time runs on a 12 hour clock, letting you make the distinction between AM and PM.
Military time: With this option enabled, you can also dictate times in military format. For example, if you say "sixteen hundred hours," Dragon Group
transcribes "1600 hrs." If you say "oh three oh five hours" or "zero three zero five hours," Dragon Group transcribes "0305 hrs."
Dictated Military time uses a 24 hour clock and abbreviates "hours" to "hrs."
n Format web and e-mail addresses: Enabled by default. Applies correct formatting to Web and e-mail addresses. For example, "john_
[email protected]" instead of "john_doe at acme corp dot com."
n Insert two spaces after period: Disabled by default. Adds two spaces after the end of a sentence instead of a single space. Having two spaces at the end of a sentence used to be standard with mono space fonts produced by typewriters, but is less common with proportional fonts used in word processing programs. If you do not select this option, Dragon Group adds a single space after the period.
n "million" instead of ".000.000": Enabled by default. Inserts numbers as a combination of Arabic numerals and text. For example, "5 million" instead of
"5,000,000."
North American region settings
n Format US Social Security Numbers: Disabled by default. Inserts hyphens in the appropriate location of a number that contains 9 digits when someone dictates it with pauses where the hyphens belong.
n Format UK and Canadian postcodes: Disabled by default. Properly formats UK and Canadian postcodes. For example, "N1 8HQ" instead of "n18hq," or "L3X 1A4"
instead of "l3x1a4." .
n Date format: Controls how Dragon Group formats dates when the day, month, and year have all been dictated. Select the format you want from the list.
If you use the default Dates As Spoken value, you need to dictate dates in an unambiguous way, using the name of the month not the digit for the month. For example, with Dates As Spoken selected, Dragon Group correctly formats
"January eleven two thousand nine" and "the seventh of February two thousand four" as dates but formats "eleven one two thousand nine" as a number.
If you prefer to dictate dates using digits for the month, try selecting the value that best matches how you dictate the date. For example, if you normally say "eleven one two thousand nine", you should set the date format to D/M/YYYY to have Dragon Group correctly transcribe the date.
If you omit the year, for example, you say "July twelve", Dragon Group transcribes
"July 12" ("The twelfth of July" becomes "12 July") regardless of the type of date formatting you select.
n Numbers, if greater than or equal to __: Enabled by default. Inserts numbers as numerals if they are equal to or greater than the value shown in the drop-down list. If the number is less than the chosen value, the number is spelled out. For example, if you select "10," Dragon Group transcribes "five" when you dictate
"five" and "11" when you dictate "eleven".
Valid values are: Do Not Format, 0, 2, 10, 100. The default value is 10.