Say the punctuation out loud
Dictate the marks as part of the sentence — "period", "comma", "new paragraph", "new line". Microsoft's guidance: speak "clearly and naturally as if you were speaking to someone in person", in "complete thoughts or sentences", and "dictate with punctuation".
Why this one: A pause is what separates text from commands: the vendor says to "pause briefly before and after saying a command so Dragon Medical One knows that you are not dictating text".
Tweak: Pause briefly after switching the microphone on and before switching it off — the vendor says this stops the first and last few words being clipped.
Fix a mis-heard word without touching the mouse
Correct by voice: "select [the word]" and "select [word] through [word]" highlight, "scratch that" or "delete that" remove what you just said, "undo that" and "redo that" step back and forward, "cap that" and "all caps that" fix capitalisation.
Why this one: Reaching for the mouse to fix one word gives back the time dictation saved. The docs pair this with "Anchor Speech Focus", which holds your text in the field you chose even when the screen moves.
Tweak: Say "what can I say" — the vendor's help article describes that opening a searchable list of commands grouped by what they do.
Teach it the words it keeps getting wrong
Say "add that to vocabulary" with the word selected, or "manage vocabulary", to open the Add word window. The vendor's quick reference notes you don't need to press the talk button on a PowerMic to train a word.
Why this one: The words it fumbles are the ones your specialty uses daily and nobody else uses at all. Vocabulary also lives at organisation level: the admin documentation describes managing it centrally, so a word can be added once for a whole group.
Turn the paragraph you retype daily into a spoken shortcut
Highlight text you've just dictated and say "make that an auto-text" to save it as a reusable block; "manage auto-texts" shows what you've got. Blocks can hold blanks marked with square brackets, and "next field" moves between them.
Why this one: A keyboard macro drops a block and abandons you in it; here one spoken phrase drops the block and a second walks you through the gaps. The admin docs also describe defining blocks for a whole group.
Tweak: The bracket characters are a setting — the vendor lists square brackets as the default and says the delimiters can be changed.
Know what to do when your words won't go in
When the cursor isn't in a field it recognises, the vendor says a dictation box opens on its own. Dictate into it, correct it there, then say "transfer text" to push the text where your cursor is; "recall text" brings it back if it landed wrong, "discard text" throws it away, and "open dictation box" opens it deliberately.
Why this one: It is the documented escape hatch for every screen outside the supported list, and knowing it is a designed fallback rather than a fault beats any individual command on day one.
Tweak: The transfer runs on a keystroke: the vendor names Shift + Insert as the default and says the method can be changed.
