Mar 6, 2016

Dragon Me Down

It is the best of software, it is the worst of software. I have a profound love-hate relationship with my Dragon NaturallySpeaking (Professional Edition) program. On the one hand, hunting and pecking an on-screen keyboard isn’t much fun. On the other hand, when using my hand-mouse-keyboard combination I do know when to use “their,” “there,” and “they’re.” I would not spell “vis-à-vis” as “res of be” and would never write “three coarse meal” unless I were writing about my own cooking.

The worst is Dragon’s bewildering misapplications of the apostrophe. Why would it think I mean to write “we bought ticket’s to the show and have dinner reservation’s at White Castle"?

It is the small errors that frustrate; they can be difficult to spot. But with the quality of my speech deteriorating, the big errors are becoming more of a problem. Below is a list of phrases Dragon heard alongside of what I actually said.

These seventeen examples were collected on one weekend about a month ago. See if you can guess what I really said in each case before using your mouse cursor to hover over and reveal the answer:

WHAT DRAGON HEARD	WHAT I SAID
wind is the father’s	the lives of others
This camel blows cheerier layer	this Timberwolves cheerleader
is the Greek jar coat question	asks the rhetorical question
Eve Penna Mize is	epitomizes
is the balls to pay	visible through a
how the skies to all almost Bloom	Elvis Costello almost blue
of those discussed of	Elvis Costello
boat some I know	books on my Nook
wrong clothes should together	grown closer together
booting attach	losing touch they said
an from a year	unfamiliar
knob fell on	novella
And for agility	Unfortunately
as eager owl input oh	Edgar Allan Poe
Xlib race in my	!
Style list six play	stylistically
Dimitri’s son sick of which	Dimitri Shostakovich

Recent ALS Bites:

DATE	TITLE
02/28/2019	Unhappy Anniversary
05/12/2017	The Eyes Have It
08/04/2016	YFALS National Corntoss Challenge
07/18/2016	Scopolamine Blues
03/06/2016	Dragon Me Down