Mac dictation commands and punctuation: the complete list

How do dictation commands work on a Mac?

While Dictation is listening, some words are treated as instructions instead of text. Say “comma” and you get a comma; say “new paragraph” and you get two line breaks. In supported languages Dictation also adds commas, periods and question marks automatically, so you only need punctuation commands when it guesses wrong. You can turn auto-punctuation off in System Settings › Keyboard › Dictation.

The full list of Apple's dictation commands

These are the commands Apple documents for dictating text in English on macOS.

Which commands are worth memorizing?

• “new line” is one Return; “new paragraph” is two.
• “caps on” … “caps off” capitalizes each word in between, handy for titles; “all caps” capitalizes the next word.
• “no space on” … “no space off” joins words, useful for usernames.
• “numeral” before a number forces digits.
• In some languages you can also insert emoji by name, such as “heart emoji”.

What about editing and navigation commands?

Commands like “select previous word”, “delete that” or “click Send” belong to Voice Control, Apple's accessibility feature for operating the Mac by voice, not to Dictation. Turn it on in System Settings › Accessibility › Voice Control to use them. Our guide to voice to text on a Mac explains when each makes sense.

Commands in SayWrite

SayWrite, our on-device dictation app, keeps its command set small so ordinary speech is never mistaken for an instruction:

• “new line” and “new paragraph”.
• “scratch that” on its own removes the last dictation.
• Voice snippets: say a trigger like “my address” and the saved text is typed verbatim, or say “snippet my address” in the middle of a sentence.
• AI voice commands (with local AI on): select text and say “make this more concise”, or end a dictation with “rewrite that to sound friendlier”. The rewrite runs on your Mac with Apple Intelligence or your own model.

Punctuation is added automatically, and filler words like um and uh can be removed for you, so there are fewer commands to learn. See spoken commands and snippets on the features page.

Commands are typed as words. Why?

Commands depend on the dictation language: English commands only work when Dictation is set to English. Pause briefly before and after a command so it isn't read as part of a sentence. If Dictation isn't working at all, go through Mac dictation not working.