Right now I’m writing on my iPad. But I’m not really writing. I’m dictating all of my speech to Siri, our favorite spastic iOS assistant. Everyone has had their bouts with her, going round and round between “Sorry I didn’t catch that,” blatant misunderstandings, and occasionally amazing precision.
Huge improvements have been made over the years, and if you’re a long-time iOS user who was tired of taking Siri’s flack in the past and haven’t revisited her, I’d say give it another go. Now, she’s even correcting words as she sees the context changing, going back earlier sentences to make sure the words are correct, to the best of her ability.
I just told her, “new paragraph” and she did the equivalent of tapping return twice. [footnote]So, yes, I had to come back and edit this line.[/footnote]
You see, when I gave that new paragraph command she didn’t type the words “new paragraph”, but instead she inserted a new paragraph.
The dictation has gotten pretty impressive over the years and now that you can see that the words are appearing on the screen rather than dictating a massive chunk of text and watching a spinning dotted circle for 20 seconds only to have nothing get typed because of a so-called network error.
I wanted to share some of the best shortcuts Siri understands. Sure, it’s weird holding your iPad or iPhone a few inches in front of your face and speaking to a screen, but for longer messages it sure beats the socks off typing everything [footnote]like an animal![/footnote][/footnote] because I can speak a whole lot faster than I can type.
The mistakes Siri makes can be frustrating, but I’m certain the time I spend editing is less than the time I would spend typing. It also feels pretty Jetson-like to just tell your pocket computer what you want it to write.
Typing commands Siri follows:
- asterisk
- ellipsis
- exclamation point
- equal sign
- hashtag
- minus sign
- new paragraph
- open bracket / close bracket
- open parenthesis / close parenthesis
- numeral + a number (types the actual number)
- plus sign
- period
- question mark
- quote / end quote
- slash, backslash
- space bar
It’s not convenient to explain punctuation to Siri, but if it’s just occasional, or you don’t have your hands free, these commands can save some time in the editing process.
I think it’s best if you use Siri inside a text editing app like Drafts by clicking the little microphone down at the bottom of the default iOS keyboard. It’s easier to edit things there, and sometimes Siri botches things so using the service by pressing and holding the home button still feels a bit risky.