Intro to using Talon commands to spell letters from the English alphabet

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Learning to spell things with the Talon alphabet commands is a good way to start learning Talon. By the end of this tutorial, it’s important to know one voice command: the help alphabet command, to bring up the Talon alphabet popup window. With that command, you can look up every other letter command. To close this popup, you say help close.

user.letter list
description : The spoken phonetic alphabet
air	a
bat	b
cap	c
drum	d
each	e
fine	f
gust	g
harp	h
sit	i
jury	j
crunch	k
look	l
made	m
near	n
odd	o
pit	p
quench	q
red	r
sun	s
trap	t
urge	u
vest	v
whale	w
plex	x
yank	y
zip	z

Additionally, the help special keys command will bring up a menu of other keyboard keys which include the space and delete keys so you can look up those commands.

user.special_key list
description : All special keys
end	end
enter	enter
escape	escape
home	home
insert	insert
pagedown	pagedown
pageup	pageup
space	space
tab	tab
delete	backspace
forward delete	delete
page up	pageup
page down	pagedown
menu key	menu
print screen	printscr

Open any text editing program you want to do this tutorial. Any editor will work. Get rid of the draft editor with the command draft hide.

Learning The Alphabet Piece By Piece

The Talon phonetic alphabet allows you to spell quickly and accurately. Let’s spell the word ‘Talon.’ Speaking as quickly or as slowly as you want, try saying the command phrase trap air look odd near into a text area.

You can clear your text editor by saying select all and delete.

It’s a lot easier to learn the Talon Phonetic Alphabet in groups, starting with groups of the most common letters and ending with groups of the least common letters.

Learn the Most Common Letters: N E A T S

Type the following letters into a text editor: n: near e: each a: air t: trap s: sun

Remember you can press the space key by saying space and delete things by saying delete. Remember you can look up the letters with the command help alphabet

Practice spelling the following words: sent nest sane teas sees sass ease

You can clear your text editor by saying select all and delete.

Learn the Next Most Common Letters: A R H I D

Type the following letters into a text editor: a: air r: red h: harp i: sit d: drum

Remember you can press the space key by saying space and delete things by saying delete. Remember you can look up the letters with the command help alphabet.

Use the following words for spelling practice: arid radar hair hid red aid air dada

You can clear your text editor by saying select all and delete

Learn the Moderately Common Letters L O C U M

Type the following letters into a text editor: l: look o: odd c: cap u: urge m: made

Remember you can press the space key by saying space and delete things by saying delete. Remember you can look up the letters with the command help alphabet.

Use the following words for spelling practice: odd loom cool mule mucluc camel cameo coca mecca

You can clear your text editor by saying select all and delete.

Learn the moderately common letters F, W, Y, G, P

Type the following letters into a text editor: f: fine w: whale y: yank g: gust p: pit

Remember you can press the space key by saying space and delete things by saying delete. Remember you can look up the letters with the command help alphabet.

Use the following words for spelling practice: gape wife yea yay wage guy waif few

You can clear your text editor by saying select all and delete.

The rare letters B, V, C, K, Q

Type the following letters into a text editor: b: bat v: vest c: cap k: crunch q: quench

Remember you can press the space key by saying space and delete things by saying delete. Remember you can look up the letters with the command help alphabet.

Use the following words for spelling practice: above vibe quack bivouac voice bake cake quick

You can clear your text editor by saying select all and delete.

Learn the rarest letters J, X, Z

Type the following letters into a text editor: j:jury x: plex z: zip

Remember you can press the space key by saying space and delete things by saying delete. Remember you can look up the letters with the command help alphabet.

Use the following words for spelling practice: jazz abuzz axe sax exit tizzy zone zippy

You can clear your text editor by saying select all and delete.

Put It All Together

Remember you can press the space key by saying space and delete things by saying delete. Remember you can look up the letters with the command help alphabet.

Spell out the following phrase: the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog

Capitalizing Letters

In order to capitalize letters, use the shift key. The command for shift key can be looked up with the help modifier command.

In order to write the capital A, say shift air, and in order to write a capital B, say shift bat, and so on for all the letters of the alphbabet.

In order to spell out Talon, say shift trap air look odd near.

One error you might encounter is that there is a command called ship which capitalizes every letter. TALON is the result of saying ship trap air look odd near

You can clear your text editor by saying select all and delete

Numbers

Numbers in Talon are simple.
If I say one it will type 1 and if I say two it will type 2.

If I say five thousand three hundred and sixty it will type 5360.

If I say one two three four five it will type 12345.

Try typing 123456789

You can clear your text editor by saying select all and delete. If you are using a Talon draft window, you can close it by saying draft hide.

All done! Time for a stretch break and to get some water!

This tutorial was written by ataraxy on Aug 29, 2021. It uses the voice control system Talon, version .0-11-0g8007 (11) by aegis