Dictating document details instead of typing them

Dictation suits exactly one kind of fact: the kind that exists nowhere but in speech. What the client just told you across the desk, the terms agreed on the phone, the instructions in your head after a meeting. Anything already printed on a document should travel as a photo or scan instead. Sorting facts into those two channels is the whole method.

Two kinds of facts in every document

Look at any filled document and every value in it came from one of two places. Some values were printed somewhere before you started: names and numbers on an ID, parcel data in a title deed, amounts on a bank statement. Others were never printed anywhere. They were spoken: the price the parties actually agreed, the deadline they settled on, who pays which fee, the special condition the client mentioned at the door. Offices type both kinds, but the two deserve different treatment.

• Printed facts have a source you can point at. The best input is an image of the source itself, so nothing is retyped on the way in.
• Spoken facts have no source but the conversation. Someone must capture them, and the choice is typing notes or saying them once into a recording.
• Mixing the channels is where errors breed: retyping a printed ID number from memory of a phone call gives you the worst of both.

Where dictation fits

Dictation earns its place at the moments when your hands are busy or the client is still in the room. Thirty seconds of speech at the right moment captures details that would otherwise live in your head until the evening, decaying the whole way.

• Right after a meeting: the agreed price, the payment schedule, the handover date, who covers the notary fee.
• During intake on the phone: the client’s stated purpose, the counterparty’s name as the client pronounces it, the rough timeline.
• In the car or between appointments, when a detail surfaces that belongs in tomorrow’s document.
• For corrections: the client calls to change the completion date, and you record the change instead of trusting a sticky note.

Should you dictate an ID number?

No. Anything printed should ride into the file as a photo or scan of the thing it is printed on. Reading a long identity number aloud adds a spoken step and a listening step between the source and the document, and each step is a chance for a digit to flip with nothing to check it against later. The photo carries the same number with zero retellings and remains checkable forever. Dictate what only the conversation knows; photograph what the paper knows.

How to dictate so software can use it

A recording made for software to read is closer to giving instructions to a new colleague than to composing prose. The aim is that each fact is labelled, complete and unambiguous on first listen.

• Label every value: say what the fact is, then the fact. The purchase price is two hundred thousand. The completion date is the fifteenth of March.
• Say dates fully, with the month as a word, so day and month cannot swap.
• Spell unusual names letter by letter the first time they appear.
• Give currencies and units explicitly rather than leaving them implied.
• State corrections as replacements: the deadline is no longer the tenth, it is the twentieth. A bare new value forces someone to guess which old one it replaces.

One more habit pays for itself: dictate at the moment the fact is fresh, not at the end of the day. The recording is a capture device, not a diary. Three short recordings tied to three matters beat one long evening recap in which the prices of two apartments sit dangerously close together.

The short version

Split every fact by where it lives. Printed facts travel as photos and scans of their source. Spoken facts get dictated once, at the moment they are fresh, with each value labelled, dates said in full and unusual names spelled out. Never dictate what you could photograph, and review dictated values with the same care as everything else before the document goes out.