How do I dictate something long?

Hands free

Holding a key for a minute is fine. Holding it for five minutes is not. For anything long, double-tap the talk key instead of holding it. The pill shows it is listening hands free, and you can sit back, walk around the room, or look at your notes while you talk.

When you have finished, tap the key once. The whole piece is written up and typed at your cursor.

How long can I talk?

Up to about ten minutes in one go. That is roughly 1,300 to 1,700 words for most people: a full report section, a detailed email, or a page of meeting notes.

Behind the scenes, long dictations are split into parts and joined back together, so you can stop and think mid-sentence without losing anything.

What it is good for

• First drafts of reports, articles, essays and proposals. Talking through a draft is often the fastest way past a blank page.
• Meeting and call notes, straight after the meeting while it is fresh, using the Notes style for tidy points.
• Long emails that need context, where typing would make you cut corners.
• Detailed AI prompts: explain the whole problem out loud and the AI prompt style turns it into a clear brief.

Tips for long dictation

1. Know your first sentence before you start. The rest usually follows.
2. Pause instead of saying "um". Fillers are removed anyway, but pauses also help the clean-up see where paragraphs break.
3. Say "new paragraph" naturally by moving on. When you change topic, the clean-up starts a new paragraph.
4. Correct yourself out loud. "The deadline is Friday, sorry, Thursday" comes out as "The deadline is Thursday".
5. Use a headset if you will be moving around the room.

If something goes wrong halfway

Every dictation is saved in History on your PC, including long ones. If the connection drops, the recording waits on your PC and sends itself when you are back online. If the window you were typing into closed, copy the text from History.

Long dictation and your plan

Long dictations count words like any other: the words in the finished text, after clean-up. On the free plan that is 2,000 words a week, so a few long pieces can use most of it; paid plans are unlimited within fair use (40 hours of speaking a month, far more than almost anyone uses). See What counts as a word?

A quick way to write a report

1. Jot down three or four headings on paper or in the document.
2. Click under the first heading, double-tap the talk key, and talk through that section.
3. Tap to finish, check it, then move to the next heading.

Working one section at a time keeps each dictation focused, and gives you a natural moment to look over what was written before you carry on.

Still stuck? Open a ticket and a person replies.