Dictation tips for work: speak so your draft needs less editing

Here's a typical situation. Between two meetings, you answer a client email by speaking it into your phone. The words come out fast. Then you read the draft. It opens with background, the actual request sits in the last sentence, one sentence starts over halfway through, and the client's name is spelled wrong. The draft follows the order in which you thought of things. Your reader needs a different order.

Here you'll learn what one study found about dictation speed and where its findings stop. You'll also see how to plan and speak so the draft needs less fixing, what to check before you send, and when Mac Dictation or Yappee is the better fit.

Is dictation faster than typing? What one study measured

In a study published in 2017, researchers compared speech input with the on-screen keyboard on an iPhone 6 Plus. Among the native English speakers, speech averaged about 153 words per minute and the keyboard about 52. That makes speech 2.93 times as fast. The timer ran from the first spoken sound to the participant's last edit, so time spent fixing recognition errors counted.

It was a lab test. The 48 participants were university students aged 19 to 32, half native speakers of American English and half native speakers of Mandarin. They sat in a quiet meeting room, and the speech recognizer was Baidu's research system Deep Speech 2. The results don't directly cover today's Mac Dictation, Yappee, or dictating in a noisy office.

The biggest limit is the task. Participants copied short phrases the researchers gave them and didn't write anything of their own. The authors note that composing adds thinking time, word choice, and hesitation, and they caution against broad conclusions about text entry in general.

The error results were mixed. For English, people fixed fewer errors while entering text by speech, 3.93 percent against 4.72 percent with the keyboard. But speech left slightly more errors in the finished text, 0.55 percent against 0.35 percent.

So getting words in by voice can be much faster. Whether a whole email goes faster depends on how much thinking and fixing it takes. The rest of this article is about the fixing.

Why a dictated draft reads differently from a typed one

When you type, you see each sentence as it forms and can move a clause or delete a word before going on. When you dictate, you think out loud, and the text keeps that shape. Background often comes first because that's how you arrived at the point. The request comes last. Sentences run long, chained with "and so". When you change your mind halfway, you start over, and with plain dictation the first half stays in the text. So do most of the thinking before you press record.

Decide the reader, purpose, and main point before you record

Plain-language guidance from Digital.gov tells writers to think about who the audience is and what it needs, to state the purpose and the bottom line, to put the most important information first, and to arrange the rest in a logical order. That advice helps even more when you dictate, because rearranging spoken sentences afterward is exactly the editing you want to avoid.

Turn it into a ten-second plan. Before you record, answer four questions in your head. Who will read this? What should happen after they read it? Which sentence must they not miss? Should it be an email, a chat message, or a list?

Here's a made-up example:

• Reader: Mara in accounting
• Purpose: get a corrected invoice
• Main point: resend the second invoice for the Lindqvist project with the new rate by Thursday
• Form: a short email

Speak in the order the text should be read

Start with the request or main point. Then give the reason. Background goes last, and only if the reader needs it. Put one fact in each sentence and pause between points instead of chaining them with "and so". If a sentence goes wrong, stop and say the whole sentence again. Then you only need to delete the broken attempt, which is easier than untangling a sentence you patched halfway.

On a Mac, you can say punctuation marks by name, and saying "new paragraph" starts one. In supported languages, Dictation also adds commas, periods, and question marks by itself. It stops after 30 seconds without speech, so have your plan ready before you start.

Here's the same email spoken two ways. Both versions are made up and show what you'd say, not what a tool writes.

Spoken in the order you thought of it:

Okay, so, I was going through the Lindqvist project yesterday, and the second invoice, it still has the old rate on it, the 85 one, and since September it's 95 euros an hour, so could you maybe resend it? Ideally by Thursday, because they close their books on Friday.

Spoken in the order Mara should read it:

Hi Mara. Could you resend the second invoice for the Lindqvist project by Thursday? It still shows the old rate of 85 euros an hour. Since September, the rate has been 95 euros an hour. The client closes their books on Friday. Thanks, Jonas.

In the second version, the request comes right after the greeting, and "maybe" and "ideally" are gone. Each sentence holds one fact, and both amounts include the currency and unit.

Say names, numbers, and dates with care

In a work message, a wrong name, amount, or day causes more trouble than a clumsy sentence. A few habits help:

• Say a person's or client's full name the first time you mention them.
• Say amounts with the currency and unit, such as "95 euros an hour".
• Say dates with the weekday, such as "Thursday, October 1".
• Keep negations in mind for your final check. If a "not" goes missing, the sentence says the opposite, and that's easy to overlook on a quick read.

On a Mac with Apple silicon, you can type a tricky name while Dictation stays on, then keep talking. With Yappee, you can add recurring names such as Lindqvist and technical terms to your custom dictionary.

What to check before you send

In the study, speech left slightly more errors in the finished text than typing did, even though participants could fix mistakes as they went. So a final read is part of dictating. Check these points:

• Names of people, clients, and products
• Numbers, amounts, units, and dates
• Every "not", "no", and "can't"
• The main point is in the first one or two sentences
• The request says who does what by when

Mac Dictation underlines ambiguous words in blue, and you can click one to pick an alternative. A word without an underline can still be wrong, though. Read the whole text once the way the recipient will.

Mac Dictation or Yappee: when each one fits

Both turn speech into text. They differ in where the text goes and what shape it takes. The Mac details in this article come from Apple's guide to dictating on a Mac, which covers macOS Tahoe 26.

Mac Dictation is the simpler choice for a short reply or a sentence that already has its final shape. The text appears where your cursor is, so there's no paste step. It has no fixed time limit, so longer passages work too.

Yappee fits when a rough spoken thought should become a finished text, such as an email, bullet points, or a chat message. These are just some of the formats you can choose. When you want to keep your own wording, choose Tidy, which removes filler words, false starts, and small errors. If the text should go out in another language, you can speak in yours and have it translated.

This split is a practical recommendation based on how each tool works. It isn't a measured comparison of speed, accuracy, or editing time.

How to dictate an email with Yappee

Here's how the routine from this article works with Yappee:

1. Make the ten-second plan with reader, purpose, main point, and form.
2. Record on your iPhone or Mac and speak in reading order.
3. Choose the Email format.
4. If the email should go out in another language, speak in your own language and have Yappee write the email in the other one.
5. Run the checklist above, then paste the email into your mail app.

Yappee works with what you say. If the request is missing from the recording, it's missing from the email too. That's intentional, because Yappee is built not to fill gaps with made-up details. You still check names, numbers, dates, and every "not" before you send. Anyone near you hears what you dictate, so record confidential messages somewhere private.

Whichever tool you use, the routine stays the same. Decide who reads the text and what the main point is, speak in reading order, and check the details before you send.