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I'm on a Sprint Samsung Galaxy S3 with Android 4.3.

I would love to become a power user of the dictation feature to dictate text messages and emails. More often than not, however, I have to hand-edit the dictated text not because of text comprehension issues but because of punctuation, capitalization and spacing problems.

These are the "commands" I've found to work. What is the full list?

"period"     --> .   (works fairly reliably)
"comma"      --> ,   (works fairly reliably)
"new line"   --> \n  (works about 50% of the time)

I've not gotten capital or anything like that to work, or acronyms. If you know how it works, please share.

2 Answers 2

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Commands

"New Line" or "Next Line"               Press the enter key once, capitalize next word
"New Paragraph" or "Next Paragraph"     Press the enter key twice, capitalize next word
"Caps <word>"                           Type with an initial capital
"All Caps <word>"                       Type in all uppercase
"Caps On"                               Start typing words with initial capitals
"Caps Off"                              Stop typing words with initial capitals

Punctuations

&                                       "ampersand" or "and sign" 
.                                       "period" or "dot" (UK "Full stop")
…                                       "ellipsis" or "dot dot dot"
:                                       "colon"
?                                       "question mark"
!                                       "exclamation mark" or "exclamation point"
,                                       "comma"
=                                       "equal sign"
@                                       "at sign"
/                                       "forward slash" or "slash"
\                                       "back slash"
-                                       "hyphen" or "dash"
*                                       "asterisk"
'                                       "begin single quote" or "open single quote"
'                                       "end single quote" or "close single quote"
"                                       "begin quote" or "open quote"
"                                       "close quote" or "end quote"
(                                       "left parenthesis" or "open parenthesis"
)                                       "right parenthesis" or "close parenthesis"
[                                       "open bracket"
]                                       "close bracket"
%                                       "percent sign"
$                                       "dollar sign"
#                                       "pound sign"
°                                       "degree sign"
:-)                                     "smiley face"
:-(                                     "sad face"
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  • I'm guessing trial and error. Not all of these still work (on my KitKat device). Commented Nov 7, 2014 at 23:12
  • 2
    "Full stop" also works for me for ., at least in UK English.
    – tremby
    Commented Sep 12, 2015 at 19:20
  • I had to view this on the Web because it was screwed up in the Android app. Also, the quote commands don't work on my S3.
    – Noumenon
    Commented Nov 16, 2015 at 16:49
  • 4
    Most of these punctuations don't work for me on Marshmallow and a Nexus 6P. As in virtually nothing after 'comma.' Slash works on occasion, but annoyingly adds a space before and/or after the slash. Everything else is a fail.
    – dashard
    Commented Apr 6, 2016 at 18:15
  • Doesn't work offline. Why? Commented Sep 29, 2017 at 20:54
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Some more voice commands, from http://thedroidlawyer.com/2015/09/punctuation-commands-for-dictation-in-voice-to-text-for-android/:

Dash = dash (-)
Ellipsis or dot dot dot = ellipsis (…)
Asterisk = asterisk (*)
Backslash = backslash (\)
Open bracket = open bracket ([)
Close bracket = closed bracket (])

More:

!    "exclamation mark"

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