Intro to using Talon verbal commands to type the symbols from the 101 American Standard (Querty) keyboard.

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Getting Started With Symbols

The next step to replace a keyboard with voice commands is learning how to type special characters.

Symbols look like this:

!@#$%^&)(][}{

+:;”’><?/\

(This list is not all of them on a standard keyboard, but enough to give you an idea.)

Symbols are needed in order to punctuate sentences and to write programming languages. It’s time to learn the names of Talon’s symbols.

This tutorial works best if you have a textarea to type into. You can do this tutorial in any text editor. To use Talon’s built in text editor, you can say the command draft show. To hide the draft window say draft hide.

The most important aspect of this walkthrough is to learn where to look up the commands for symbols. There are two places these can be looked up. The help symbols menu lists commands for individual characters. The help context symbols menu lists common combinations of symbols.

You can see a full list of the symbols on the help symbols menu and the help context symbols menu at the bottom of this tutorial.

English Puncutation Characters

Let’s start with English punctuation characters. See what happens when you say period comma exclamation point question colon semicolon into a textarea.

It typed .,!?:; Say select all delete to delete what was just typed.

All of these commands and several alternates can be found on the help symbols menu.

Another very useful command is the spamma command. The spamma command is a command that writes a comma and a space after the comma, which is something people want in order to be able write English correctly.

This command can be looked up in the ‘help context symbols’ menu.

Parentheticals

Now let’s start with symbols for parenthetical clauses, which are also used a lot in programming.

See what is typed when you say inside parens.

The most common command I use to to insert parenthesis is inside parens and can be looked up on the last page of the help context symbols help menu. It is different from the help symbols menu because the help symbols menu represents single symbols and the help context symbols menu is (mostly) common combinations of symbols. Say select all delete to delete what was just typed.

See what happens when you say left paren space right paren

It is possible to type parentheses individually with left paren L paren R paren right paren and a few other commands you can look up with the help symbols menu.

Say select all delete to delete what was just typed.

Characters to Add Quotation Marks:

Now let’s do some quotation symbols.

See what happens when you say empty string go way right space empty dubstring.

Quotes are usually added added in pairs. So the commands to add quotes in pairs are very useful. Empty string is the command for pairs of single quotes, and empty dubstring is the command for pairs of double quotes. Those come from the help context symbols menu. Commands for individual symbols include quote, double quote, and apostrophe and those can be found on the help symbols menu.

Say select all delete to delete what was just typed.

Math Symbols:

Now let’s do a collection of symbols normally used for math.

See what happens when you say plus minus slash star.

You can say plus for “+”, minus or dash for the -, slash or forward slash for division, star or asterisk * for multiplication, all of which are found in the help symbols menu.

Say select all delete to delete what was just typed.

See what happens when you say equals less than greater than.

The equals for is for the “=”, left angle or less than is for “<”, right angle or greater than for is for the “>”, all of which are found in the help symbols menu. Say select all delete to delete what was just typed.

Brackets and Braces

See what happens when you say inside parens inside squares inside braces.

Brackets and braces are essential to programming, and they come in pairs. inside parens for (), inside squares for [], inside braces for {}, which can all be seen on the help context symbols menu.

Once you start using the inside commands, you are going to want to learn the arrow key commands. go left will move the cursor one character left. go right will move the cursor one character right. If you have lines, go up will move the cursor one character up, and go down will move the cursor one character down.

It’s also possible to type out the characters individually. left square for “[”, and right square for “]”, left brace for “{“ and right brace for “}” can all be seen on the help symbols menu. And again, left paren types “(“ and right paren types “)”.

Say select all delete to delete what was just typed.

Symbols from The Number Row:

There are also a lot of other symbols that are found on the number row of the keyboard.

See what happens when you say back tick tilde (pronounced TILL day) at sign hash dollar sign percent caret ampersand (pronounced AMP er sand)

You should see ` for the backtick symbol, ~ for the tilde sign @ for the at sign, hash for #, dollar sign for $, all of which can be found in help symbols.

You should see also see percent for %, caret for ^, ampersand for &, all of which are found in the help symbols menu.

Say select all delete to delete what was just typed.

The Rest:

And there are a few other symbols on the keyboard that we have not covered. See what happens when you say underscore pipe backslash.

You should see \_ for the underscore sign, pipe for |, and backslash for \, all of which can be found in the help symbols menu.

Say select all delete to delete what was just typed.

Congrats! If you have been using the Talon draft window, you can close it with the command draft hide. You now know how to press all the symbol keys on a standard United States keyboard, how to access the help symbols menu to look up symbols, and how to access the help context symbols menu to to look up common symbol combinations.

Congratulate yourself on finishing this walkthrough!

Help Symbols Menu

This is the information that appears on the help symbils menu. It represents voice commands for every symbol on the qwerty keyboard.

user.symbol-key list
description : All symbols from the keyboard
dot	.
point	.
quote	'
apostrophe	'
L square	[
left square	[
square	[
R square	]
right square	]
slash	/
backslash	\
minus	-
dash	-
equals	=
plus	+
tilde	~
bang	!
down score	-
under score	-
paren	(
L paren	(
left paren	(
R paren	)
right paren	)
brace	{
left brace	{
R brace	}
right brace	}
angle	<
left angle	<
less than	<
rangle	>
R angle	>
right angle	>
greater than	>
star	*
hash	#
percent	%
caret	^
amper	&
pipe	|
dubquote	"
double quote	"
dollar	$
pound	£
`	`
,	,
back tick	`
grave	`
comma	,
period	.
full stop	.
semicolon	;
colon	:
forward slash	/
question mark	?
exclamation mark	!
exclamation point	!
asterisk	*
hash sign	#
number sign	#
percent sign	%
at sign	@
and sign	&
ampersand	&
dollar sign	$
pound sign	£

Help Context Symbols menu

This is the information that appears on the ‘help context symbols’ menu. It represents a grab-bag of useful commands having to do with symbols.

Symbols
question [mark]	Insert "?".
(downscore | underscore)	Insert "-".
double dash	Insert "--".
(bracket | brack | left bracket)	Insert "{".
(rbrack | are bracket | right bracket)	Insert "}".
triple quote	Insert "'''".
(triple grave | triple back tick | gravy)	Insert "```".
(dot dot | dotdot)	Insert "..".
ellipses	Insert "...".
(comma and | spamma)	Insert ", ".
plus	Insert "+".
arrow	Insert "->".
dub arrow	Insert "=>".
new line	Insert "\n".
carriage return	Insert "\r".
line feed	Insert "\r\n".
empty dubstring	Insert """". Press left.
empty escaped (dubstring | dub quotes)	Insert "\"\"". Press left. Press left.
empty string	Insert "''". Press left.
empty escaped string	Insert "\'\'". Press left. Press left.
(inside parens | args)	Insert "()". Press left.
inside (squares | square brackets | list)	Insert "[]". Press left.
inside (bracket | braces)	Insert "{}". Press left.
inside percent	Insert "%%". Press left.
inside (quotes | string)	Insert "''". Press left.
inside (double quotes | dubquotes)	Insert """". Press left.
inside (graves | back ticks)	Insert "``". Press left.
angle that	Let <text> be the selected text. Pastes text and preserves clipboard.
(square | square bracket) that	Let <text> be the selected text. Pastes text and preserves clipboard.
(bracket | brace) that	Let <text> be the selected text. Pastes text and preserves clipboard.
(parens | args) that	Let <text> be the selected text. Pastes text and preserves clipboard.
percent that	Let <text> be the selected text. Pastes text and preserves clipboard.
quote that	Let <text> be the selected text. Pastes text and preserves clipboard.
(double quote | dubquote) that	Let <text> be the selected text. Pastes text and preserves clipboard.
(grave | back tick) that	Let <text> be the selected text. Pastes text and preserves clipboard.