Here is how to use Siri to it’s fullest possible potential, with correct grammar and punctuation.

Recently, as everyone on the planet knows, the iPhone 4s was released, and one of it’s many new features is the fact that you no longer have to type on your iPhone. Yes. Take a second. Read what I just said. Take it in, process it, and then let me tell you how and why. First though, let me explain what exactly I am talking about.

Siri. That’s what I am talking about. Siri has been introduced as the new “personal assistant” feature of the iPhone 4s, exclusively. Now, the problem is that Apple did not emphasize the features of Siri enough, with the feature of speech-to-text being the game changer here. Yes, that’s right, you no longer have to type, because the speech-to-text feature is so robust that you don’t actually have to burden yourself by typing anymore, because anywhere in iOS 5 (on the iPhone 4s) that has a keyboard, to the immediate left of the spacebar is a small, little microphone icon. You simply tap that icon, and you can talk to your device instead of type. As long as you speak clearly, slowly, and precisely, it will be about 95-100% accurate. The only exception to it working this well is if you normally speak as if you have a mouth full of marbles, if you mumble, if you stutter, or if you are otherwise unclear in your speech for some reason. So, with that being said, let’s move on to the meat of this article: proper and correct pronunciation.

Our very own @d900man has put out a video on the MyGreatiPhone YouTube channel displaying some of the methods for getting everything to function well. You can find that link here:

Now, as any of our readers can see, especially after reading my long-winded recruitment article, you can tell that I am a stickler for proper grammar and punctuation. I am worse than anal retentive. I am ridiculous, honestly. But I can’t help it, I was brought up to respect the English language, and because of this, I have a deep symbiosis for my craft. The first thing that I noticed about Siri when I started using the speech-to-text feature was that it wound up looking like one, long, run-on sentence that made me look like I was illiterate. But then, I remembered that Siri was created by one separate team, but that Nuance, the company responsible for making such great software as “Dragon Naturally Speaking”, and “Dragon Dictation” had silently partnered with Apple earlier in the year. So, I began to speak to my iPhone 4s as if it were a dictation machine. I had learned this skill while I was younger, when I was working at a law firm, and I had some previous experience with a piece of equipment called a “dictaphone”. I simply utilized that talent of mine, and aimed it at Siri, and the results were startling to me: it did exactly what I wanted it to. Now, I am going to give you a list of commands that you can use starting in the next paragraph, but unfortunately, Siri will not be able to dictate those. That’s right. This entire article was composed by Siri, via speech-to-text dictation methods. And here is the proof.

Siri Example by d900man

The text in bold and in quotes is how you would say it to Siri. 

The text in italics is how it will look. 

So, let’s give this a try.

Hey guys comma how has your day been going question mark

Hey guys, how has your day been going?

What do you think of this speech dash to dash text feature question mark isn’t it great question mark exclamation point

What do you think of this speech-to-text feature? Isn’t it great?!

I wasn’t sure how to get Siri to start ending a paragraph where I wanted it to comma so I did some research on the internet period thanks to some interesting articles I’ve found involving dictation techniques comma I was able to find out how to properly do it period new paragraph what about you question mark have you figured it out yet question mark is this article helping question mark

I wasn’t sure how to get Siri to start ending a paragraph where I wanted it to, so I did some research on the internet. Thanks to some interesting articles I’ve found involving dictation techniques, I was able to find out how to properly do it. 

What about you? Have you figured it out yet? Is this article helping?

I don’t know about you, comma but I agree with most tech bloggers on the internet colon siri is absolutely a quote game changer end quote exclamation point

I don’t know about you, but I agree with most tech bloggers on the internet: Siri is absolutely a “game changer”!

My salary was short exclamation point they only gave me six hundred and fifty seven dollars and fifty nine cents exclamation point i was supposed to bring home eight hundred sixty four dollars and thirty two cents this week exclamation point

My salary was short! They only gave me $657.59! I was supposed to bring home $864.32 this week!

Those are the most common punctuation marks and techniques that you’ll be using, but what about if you want to get some emphasis across? Here’s how:

This french onion soup is all caps damn good exclamation point

This french onion soup is DAMN good!

There are only three types of people in this world semi colon those who can count comma and those who can’t exclamation point

There are only three types of people in this world; those who can count, and those who can’t!

So, as you can see, there are many different ways you can manipulate the Siri speech-to-text dictation function to suit your needs. In the YouTube video I linked to above, @d900man said that there was a certain member of the team that hasn’t used their keyboard. That would be me. Anyone who knows me personally, knows that whenever I sent a text message saying “hello”, it spans the length of about three novels. So for me, I simply open up all sorts of apps, tap the microphone, and go to town. I do this for my tweets, which go far beyond 4,000 characters now at times, and for articles where I have a lot of information to jot down from my mind as I think it. The only times that I use the keyboard are when Siri will misinterpret something I say and replace it with a non-sensical word and I will have to replace it. Or, if I need to copy/paste something, or mess with proper capitalizations.

There are, however, certain things that you need to be aware of though. This speech-to-text function works through Siri. Siri only works by connecting to Apple’s servers, which interpret your incoming audio “seemingly” on-the-fly and translates it to text. That means that Apple servers could, hypothetically, KEEP everything you speak on record. Everyone knows that cellular carriers have access to your SMS messages, but in a point brought up by @KP1877 on twitter, now, the cellular device manufacturers have that option as well, if they so desire to use it. Beware of that, before using. It may be a major issue for some people.

The other thing you should also be aware of is the fact that Siri is still in the “beta” stages, according to Apple. That means that she will act like a real personal assistant: every now and then, she will take an unexpected day off. That means sometimes, usually not for long periods of time, Siri will be unable to communicate with Apple’s servers for whatever reason. This is to be expected with beta software, so do not panic, it just means that you will have to do some typing and internet research on your own, that’s all.

I truly hope that this article helped you out a little bit, and we will continually keep on reporting in regards to Siri, especially as new information becomes available.