The Vocabulary Editor window is your interface for viewing and editing the list of words, phrases, and symbols that MacSpeech Scribe can transcribe.
To summon the Vocabulary Editor window, choose Tools > Vocabulary Editor.
The very first time you open the Vocabulary Editor window when a given profile is active, there will be a brief delay while MacSpeech Scribe generates an initial list of the built-in dictation vocabulary for that profile. Once this initial list is generated, subsequent access to the Vocabulary Editor window is rapid. (The list is long, though — over 150,000 words — so there can still be a brief delay when you perform certain actions in the window.)
To switch among vocabulary lists:
Click All, Built-In, or User. User vocabulary can come from vocabulary training (analysis of written text) or from direct editing in this window. An icon distinguishes built-in vocabulary from user vocabulary.
To filter the displayed list:
Type in the search field and press Return. The pop-up menu in the search field lets you determine whether the filter operation is Contains, Begins With, or Ends With. Both the written and spoken forms are searched. For example, a Contains search on “dash” lists “balderdash”, because its written form contains “dash”, but also “---
”, because its spoken form is “em-dash.” To empty the search field and stop filtering the list (displaying the entire list), click the “x” in the search field or press Esc when the search field has focus.
If you do a search and no match is found, and if you’re in the All category, MacSpeech Scribe will offer to add the term to your user vocabulary. To add it, click Yes. (You can edit this new vocabulary item later.) To decline, click No.
To edit a vocabulary item:
Select the item, and use the info area at the bottom of the window. If the info area is not present, click the info button to summon it.
You can’t edit the written form of a vocabulary item. You can edit the spoken form of a user vocabulary item, but not of a built-in vocabulary item; you should do this if the item’s written form differs from its pronunciation. (For best results, train the item’s pronunciation, as described below.) To edit the spoken form of a user vocabulary item:
Type the spoken form (an English spelling equivalent to how the word is pronounced) and press Return. You should see a dialog warning that any recorded training for this word will be erased.
The Vocabulary Editor window info area also displays features of the selected vocabulary item having to do with MacSpeech Scribe’s intelligent automatic capitalization and spacing. You can edit these features for user vocabulary items, and for most built-in vocabulary items (although some built-in vocabulary items have complex automatic capitalization and spacing rules, which can’t be fully displayed or edited):
Spaces before and after. Normal words will have one space before and one space after. But a punctuation mark might follow a different rule.
Next word. How should the word following this item be capitalized? In most cases, “Natural capitalization” (the default) will be the right choice.
Lower case in titles. A “title” is a phrase dictated while title casing is turned on (Caps On). You might prefer that “small” words such as “of” or “in” not be capitalized in such phrases.
To create a new user vocabulary item:
Click the button. Type the word, as written, in the dialog. To add a description of how the word is spoken, or to train the word’s pronunciation by speaking, click Advanced to reveal the rest of the dialog.
To delete a user vocabulary item:
Select the word and press Delete (or choose Delete from the Gear menu). A dialog appears giving you an opportunity to change your mind.
To export and import vocabulary items:
To export, select the item(s) and choose Export from the Gear menu. An XML file is created. To import, choose Import from the Gear menu and specify an exported XML file. User vocabulary, when created, belongs to the current profile, so this is a way to copy user vocabulary from one profile to another.