Mac Dictation Commands: Punctuation, New Lines, and More

Mac dictation types what you say — but punctuation, paragraph breaks, and capitalization only appear when you ask for them out loud. The commands are built in, undocumented in the interface, and the difference between dictation that needs a full edit pass and dictation you can send as-is. Here's the working vocabulary.

Punctuation you can speak

Say the name of the mark and macOS types the symbol instead of the word. The essentials:

• "period" / "full stop" → .   "comma" → ,   "question mark" → ?   "exclamation point" → !
• "colon" → :   "semicolon" → ;   "dash" → –   "hyphen" → -
• "open quote" … "close quote" → “ ”   "apostrophe" → '
• "open parenthesis" … "close parenthesis" → ( )
• "ampersand" → &   "at sign" → @   "hashtag" → #   "percent sign" → %   "dollar sign" → $

Since macOS Ventura, dictation also punctuates automatically on Apple silicon Macs — it inserts periods, commas, and question marks as you speak. If the two collide for you, the switch lives at System Settings → Keyboard → Dictation → Auto-punctuation. Turn it off and only spoken punctuation appears; turn it back on to restore the automatic behaviour.

Line breaks and capitalization

• "new line" — moves to the next line, like pressing Return once.
• "new paragraph" — presses Return twice, starting a fresh paragraph.
• "caps on" … "caps off" — Title-Cases Every Word Between The Two Commands.
• "all caps" — makes just the next word UPPERCASE; "all caps on" … "all caps off" holds it for a run of words.
• "no caps on" … "no caps off" — forces lowercase, useful for handles and file names.
• "numeral" — types the next number as a digit ("numeral five" → 5) when macOS would otherwise spell it out.

Emoji by name

Say the emoji's name followed by the word "emoji" and dictation inserts the character: "heart emoji" → ❤️, "thumbs up emoji" → 👍, "fire emoji" → 🔥. This works for common, unambiguously named emoji; obscure ones may come out as words, in which case the picker at Ctrl+Cmd+Space is still faster than negotiating with the microphone.

Mix typing and talking

On macOS 14 Sonoma and later, the dictation cursor no longer switches off when you touch the keys: you can type a tricky proper noun mid-sentence, keep talking, and macOS stitches both into the same text stream. On Ventura, keyboard input ends the dictation session, so finish speaking before you edit. Either way, dictation stops on its own after a stretch of silence — or immediately when you press the dictation shortcut again or hit Esc.

Getting cleaner results

A few habits make the commands land reliably. Speak the punctuation in the same breath as the sentence — "send the file by friday period" — rather than pausing before it; a long gap makes macOS more likely to type the word instead of the mark. Names, jargon, and anything the dictionary won't guess are quicker typed than corrected, which is exactly what Sonoma's mixed typing-and-talking is for. And on Apple silicon Macs, dictation for supported languages runs on-device since Ventura, so it works offline and keeps going well past the old server-length limits — you can genuinely draft whole paragraphs by voice, fixing the odd word afterwards, instead of dictating a sentence at a time.

If the mic keeps popping up uninvited

The flip side of dictation being one double-tap away is triggering it by accident. Change the dictation shortcut to a key you'd never brush, or disable the trigger entirely.