One of the updated features in Windows 11 is the new Voice Typing with auto punctuation. If you have a microphone (or even a webcam with a built-in microphone), you can use it to start typing with your voice. (Press Win + H, or select the mic button on the Touch keyboard.) Thankfully, Voice Typing has evolved and now includes auto punctuation, so you don’t have to correct as much punctuation as before.
Skip to Voice Typing Commands for Windows 11.
It’s early days yet! Based on Microsoft’s Voice Typing Command list, below are the main Windows 11 Voice Typing commands and punctuation commands we have tried and tested so far, plus a few dictation commands borrowed from Microsoft’s Windows Speech Recognition page for Windows 10. There are not many voice commands at the moment, so we hope that Microsoft will release some more for Voice Typing. Commands or phrases that don’t work with Voice Typing are labeled with a thumbs-down sign 👎.
Languages 🌍
The below lists show American English. Microsoft’s official pages (above) include a drop-down list for you to choose your own language.
Voice Typing Commands for Windows 11
| Voice typing command | What you can say |
| Stop or pause voice typing | Pause dictation |
| Stop voice typing | |
| Stop dictation | |
| Stop listening | |
| Stop dictating | |
| Stop voice mode | |
| Pause voice mode | |
| Delete last spoken word or phrase | Delete that |
| Erase that | |
| Scratch that | |
| Select last spoken word or phrase | Select that |
Voice Typing Punctuation commands amalgamated from Microsoft’s Voice Typing and Windows Speech Recognition pages
| To Insert this | Say this |
|---|---|
| , | Comma |
| ; | Semicolon |
| . | Period; Dot; full stop |
| : | Colon |
| “ | Open double quote 👎; Open quote; Open quotes |
| “ | Close double quote 👎; Close quote; Close quotes |
| ‘ | Apostrophe 👎 |
| ‘ | Open single quote; Begin single quote |
| ‘ | Close single quote; End single quote |
| > | Greater than sign; Left/Open angle bracket |
| < | Less than sign; Right/Close angle bracket |
| / | Forward slash |
| \ | Backslash |
| ~ | Tilde 👎; Tilde sign 👎; Tilde symbol |
| @ | At sign; At mention |
| ! | Exclamation mark; Exclamation point |
| ? | Question mark |
| # | Number sign; Pound sign |
| $ | Dollar sign |
| % | Percent sign |
| ^ | Caret 👎; Caret sign 👎; Caret symbol |
| ( | Open parenthesis; Left parenthesis |
| ) | Close parenthesis; Right parenthesis |
| _ | Underscore |
| – | Dash 👎; Hyphen; Minus sign |
| – | En dash |
| — | Em dash 👎 |
| = | Equal sign |
| + | Plus sign |
| { | Open curly bracket 👎; Open brace; Left curly brace |
| } | Close curly bracket 👎; Close brace; Right curly brace |
| [ | Open bracket; Left bracket; Left square/Open square bracket |
| ] | Close bracket; Right bracket; Right square/Close square bracket |
| | | Vertical bar 👎; Vertical bar sign/symbol; Pipe character |
| 🙂 | Smiley face |
| 🙁 | Frowny face |
| 😉 | Winky face |
| ™ | Trademark sign 👎 |
| ¾ | Three-quarter sign 👎; Three-quarters |
| ¼ | One-quarter sign 👎; One-quarter |
| ½ | One-half sign 👎; One-half |
| £ | Pound sterling sign |
| € | Euro sign |
| & | Ampersand; And sign |
| * | Asterisk |
| // | Double slash 👎; Forward slash, forward slash |
| ` | Backtick 👎; Back quote |
| < | Open-angle bracket |
| > | Close-angle bracket |
| ± | Plus or minus sign |
| « | Open-angle quote 👎 |
| » | Close-angle quote 👎 |
| × | Multiplication sign |
| ÷ | Division sign |
| ¢ | Cent sign 👎 |
| ¥ | Yen sign |
| § | Section sign |
| © | Copyright sign |
| ® | Registered trademark sign 👎; Registered sign |
| ° | Degree sign |
| ¶ | Paragraph sign |
| … | Ellipsis; Dot dot dot |
| ƒ | Function sign 👎 |
| ‘s | Apostrophe-s |
Voice Typing is not Windows Speech Recognition
Please note that Voice Typing is not the same as Windows Speech Recognition, which allows you to control your device and apps with many different commands. Voice Typing is primarily used to type text into text fields, like writing emails, blog posts, and notes. Having said that, there are a few Speech Recognition dictation commands that also work with Voice Typing, too:
Commands for dictation that happen to work with Voice Typing
Below are some `commands for dictation’ taken from Microsoft’s Windows Speech Recognition page, which do or don’t 👎 currently work with Windows 11’s Voice Typing. On their page, Microsoft says that `Help & learning for Windows 11 is coming soon!‘ The objective of the following list is not to highlight what Voice Typing doesn’t do but to encourage Microsoft to carry some Speech Recognition commands over to Voice Typing. If any commands become available for Voice Typing, we will update these lists. Feel free to let us know of any more in the Comments.
| To do this | Say this |
|---|---|
| Insert a new line in the document | New line |
| Insert a new paragraph in the document | New paragraph |
| Insert a tab | Tab 👎 |
| Insert the literal word (for example, insert the word “comma” instead of the punctuation mark) | Literal word 👎 |
| Insert the numeral form of a number (for example, insert 3 instead of the word three) | Numeral number 👎 |
| Put the cursor before a specific word | Go to word 👎 |
| Put the cursor after a specific word | Go after word 👎 |
| Don’t insert a space before the next word | No space 👎 |
| Go to the start of the current sentence | Go to start of sentence 👎 |
| Go to the start of the current paragraph | Go to start of paragraph 👎 |
| Go to the start of the current document | Go to start of document 👎 |
| Go to the end of the current sentence | Go to end of sentence 👎 |
| Go to the end of the current paragraph | Go to end of paragraph 👎 |
| Go to the end of the current document | Go to end of document 👎 |
| Select a word in the current document | Select word 👎 |
| Select a word range in the current document | Select word range; 👎Select word through word 👎 |
| Select all text in the current document | Select all 👎 |
| Select a number of words before the location of the cursor | Select previous 20 words; 👎 Select previous 10 words 👎 |
| Select a number of words after the location of the cursor | Select next 20 words 👎; Select next 10 words 👎 |
| Select the last text you dictated | Select that |
| Clear the selection on the screen | Clear selection 👎 |
| Capitalize the first letter of a word | Caps word 👎 |
| Capitalize all the letters of a word | All caps word 👎 |
| Make all the letters in a word lowercase | No caps word 👎 |
| Change the next number of words to uppercase | Change next 10 words to uppercase 👎 |
| Change the next number of words to lowercase | Change next 10 words to lowercase 👎 |
| Delete the previous sentence | Delete previous sentence 👎 |
| Delete the next sentence | Delete next sentence 👎 |
| Delete the previous paragraph | Delete previous paragraph 👎 |
| Delete the next paragraph | Delete next paragraph 👎 |
| Delete the selected or last dictated text | Delete that |
So many commands, so little time
Windows Speech Recognition has many more commands than we show here. It can get a little confusing to understand which commands might work in Voice Typing when you know that they exist for Windows Speech Recognition. As we said, it’s early days yet. Windows 11 has only just been released to the general public, so we look forward to seeing whether any commands get carried over to Voice Typing and how powerful Voice Typing will become.
Try Windows 11’s Voice Typing for yourself
As you can see and hopefully try for yourself, Voice Typing in Windows 11 is a convenient, fresh, and modern way to type, blog, email, or get your thoughts down on paper (so to speak). We forgive you for thinking that using your voice for typing was mainly a tool for the disabled. While you will find the voice typing settings within the Windows 11 Accessibility Settings panel (where they logically reside), voice typing is nowadays used by people with or without accessibility requirements.
How do you open Voice Typing again?
Press the Windows key + H.
Auto Punctuation
If you’d like to use Auto Punctuation, be sure to toggle it on via the settings:
Windows Speech Recognition
If you are interested in dictating with your voice and controlling your Windows device with your voice, then Windows Speech Recognition is probably the tool for you. You can find Windows Speech Recognition via the Accessibility – Speech panel.
First, toggle Windows Speech Recognition on via the Accessibility – Speech panel.
Press the Windows logo key + Ctrl + S to turn speech recognition on or off.
If in doubt, search
As always, if you need to find a setting or app in Windows, you can search for it via the Start Menu (Windows key) or Search panel (Windows key + S).
Personal thoughts
When testing Voice Typing for this article, I used Windows 11 Version 21H2 (OS Build 22000.194), WordPad, and Word in Microsoft 365.
As an old roommate to both a person with quadriplegia and a blind person, it’s easy to appreciate the freedom and empowerment potential that voice dictation software has to offer. Some dictation apps in the past were costly, so it’s good to see that voice dictation is more mainstream nowadays and continues to evolve and come free with Microsoft Windows.
Voice Typing is a quick and useful tool
We appreciate that the Voice Typing feature is not supposed to be as powerful as Windows Speech Recognition. However, we encourage Microsoft to pass on more functionality to Voice Typing as it evolves and is embraced by more people.
Do you like the idea of typing with your voice?
If you know of other commands that work with Voice Typing, please let us know and we will add them to this list.
Grant is the webmaster here and a longtime computer enthusiast. He enjoys building new PCs and fixing old ones. Originally from the UK, Grant lives in Japan, teaches English, and is a part-time vegetable farmer. Lesser-known history about him includes getting his Commercial Helicopter License CPL(H) in the US and being a caregiver in the disabled community. Grant enjoys playing Apex Legends.
