Lists are one of those things that feel trivial until you try to dictate one. You say the items perfectly clearly, and what comes back is a single sentence with the numbers spelled out as words, run together, needing five minutes of tidying. It is the sort of small defeat that sends people back to the keyboard.
There is a neater way, and it takes one phrase to trigger.
The short version: start with make a list, then say your items separated by spoken numbers or the word next. PeekoType formats them as a proper numbered list, one item per line, each capitalised. It only activates on the explicit trigger, so ordinary prose is never turned into a list by accident.
How to use it
Say something like this:
"Make a list one milk two bread three eggs"
And you get:
1. Milk2. Bread3. Eggs
Each item lands on its own line, numbered in order and capitalised. No tidying, no manual renumbering, no fighting with your word processor's autocorrect.
The trigger phrases
Any of these will start a list, and they are deliberately phrased the way people actually speak:
- make a list
- create a list
- here is a list, or here's a list
Words in between are tolerated, so "make me a numbered list" works just as well. The only requirement is that the phrase contains one of those verbs followed by the word list.
Separating your items
Two options, whichever suits the moment.
Spoken numbers. One through twelve. This is the natural choice when you already know how many items you have, and it reads back sensibly if you review the audio in your head.
The word next. Say "make a list apples next bananas next oranges" and you get the same result. This is better when you are thinking as you go and do not yet know where you will stop, which is most real lists.
You can mix them if you lose your place, which happens to everyone around item seven.
Why the trigger phrase is required
This is the design decision that makes the feature safe rather than annoying.
Ordinary English is full of the words one, two and three. "One of the things I wanted to raise is that two of our suppliers have gone quiet." Without a required trigger, a system looking for spoken numbers would slice that perfectly normal sentence into a mangled list. You would then spend more time undoing the formatting than you saved.
So the trigger is compulsory. Say make a list and the feature engages. Say anything else, and every number you speak is typed as ordinary prose. It is the same principle behind the way spoken punctuation commands and voice editing commands only fire on a complete, deliberate utterance.
Where people actually use this
The obvious one is a shopping list dictated into your phone notes while looking in the fridge. But the pattern that comes up most often in real work is meetings.
You come out of a call with six action points in your head. They will be gone in ten minutes. Saying "make a list one chase the invoice two send Sarah the draft three book the venue" while walking back to your desk captures all of them in a form you can actually act on, rather than a paragraph you will have to re-read and break apart later.
Teachers use it for lesson objectives, nurses for handover points, estate agents for property features, and writers for chapter beats. Our guides for teachers, nurses and healthcare assistants and small business owners go into the workflows in more depth.
The honest limitations
Worth knowing before you rely on it. Spoken numbers are recognised up to twelve, which covers the overwhelming majority of lists people dictate in one breath. Longer lists are better dictated in two goes.
The feature is also English-specific for the number words themselves, because it needs to recognise one, two and three as separators. Since it only activates when you deliberately say make a list in English, this causes no problems for anyone dictating in another language, and the rest of PeekoType still works across all 100 supported languages.
Turning it off
Like every piece of automatic tidying in PeekoType, this is a toggle you control. It sits in the Smart output panel next to filler word removal and voice commands. If you never dictate lists, or you write about lists and keep triggering it, switch it off and spoken numbers become ordinary words again.
The full set of options is documented in the user guide, and our practical daily guide covers which ones are worth leaving on.