The first time most people try dictation, they talk for thirty seconds and end up with one enormous run-on sentence with no punctuation in it at all. They reach for the mouse, fix it by hand, and quietly conclude that dictation is more trouble than typing.
It is a shame, because the fix takes about a minute to learn and it changes everything. You simply say the punctuation out loud.
The short version: say full stop, comma, question mark, new line or new paragraph as you dictate and PeekoType inserts them properly. Say delete or scratch that on its own and it removes what you just said. Commands only trigger when spoken deliberately, so ordinary sentences containing those words are typed as normal text.
The complete command list
These are spoken at the end of a phrase, exactly where you would type the mark itself.
| Say this | You get |
|---|---|
| full stop, or period | . |
| comma | , |
| question mark | ? |
| exclamation mark, or exclamation point | ! |
| colon | : |
| semicolon | ; |
| new line | a line break |
| new paragraph | a blank line, then a new paragraph |
Both full stop and period work, which is worth mentioning for anyone who learned dictation on American software and has the habit already.
Chaining commands together
Commands stack, which is where they start to feel genuinely fluent. Say this:
"Thanks very much for sending that over comma new line I will take a look this afternoon full stop"
And you get:
Thanks very much for sending that over,
I will take a look this afternoon.
Once this becomes muscle memory you stop thinking about it entirely. People who dictate a lot report that spoken punctuation becomes as automatic as reaching for the full stop key, usually within a few days.
Deleting with your voice
Say delete or backspace on its own and the last thing you dictated disappears. Politeness is tolerated, so "please delete" and "just delete" work too, which is oddly satisfying.
For bigger corrections there is a richer set of editing commands. Saying scratch that, undo, or delete that last sentence removes the previous sentence rather than just the last burst of speech. There is a whole piece on how that works in editing your dictation by voice.
The safety rule that makes this usable
Here is the design decision that matters most, and the reason you can trust the feature.
Deletion and editing commands only fire when the phrase is the entire thing you said. Not part of a sentence. The whole thing, on its own, with nothing else attached.
So if you dictate "please delete the file from the shared drive", every word of that is typed as ordinary text. Nothing is removed. The word delete only becomes a command when you pause, say "delete", and stop.
This sounds like a small detail. It is the difference between a feature you can rely on and one that occasionally eats a paragraph and destroys your confidence in the whole tool. Anyone who writes about software, law, or computing regularly says words like delete and undo in ordinary sentences, and they should be able to do so without flinching.
Punctuation you do not have to ask for
Worth knowing: PeekoType adds basic sentence punctuation automatically even if you never speak a single command. It finishes sentences with a full stop, capitalises the first word, and capitalises after full stops, question marks and exclamation marks.
So spoken commands are for control, not survival. Use them when you want a comma exactly there, a line break exactly here, or a question mark that the model might otherwise miss. Ignore them entirely and you still get readable, properly capitalised prose. More on that in our piece on automatic punctuation.
Making lists by voice
There is one more command worth knowing, and it is a small delight. Start with a trigger phrase such as "make a list", then separate your items with spoken numbers:
"Make a list one milk two bread three eggs"
Becomes a properly formatted numbered list. It only triggers on the explicit phrase, so ordinary prose containing the words one and two is never mangled into a list by accident. We cover the details in turning spoken lists into formatted lists.
When to switch commands off
Voice commands are a single toggle, and there are legitimate reasons to turn them off. If you write about punctuation, teach English, or draft technical documentation full of instructions like "type comma here", you may find yourself fighting the feature rather than using it. Turn it off, punctuate manually, and everything else keeps working exactly as before.
That is the general philosophy across PeekoType: every piece of cleverness is a switch you control, not a behaviour imposed on you.
Getting fluent
Give it a week. Start by using only full stop and new paragraph, since those two cover most writing. Add comma once the first two feel automatic. Leave the rest until you actually need them.
Almost everyone who sticks with it past the first few days stops noticing they are doing it, and then finds typing punctuation faintly annoying by comparison. If you are just getting started, our five-minute setup guide is the place to begin, and the full user guide lists every command in one place.