Sacha Chua has a really nice post on dictating into Emacs. She starts by quoting Matt Weber on how he writes better than he speaks. Chua can relate and so can I. We both feel the same way. As I’ve said before, “…my written thoughts are always much better organized than my spoken ones…”.
Being who she is, Chua resolved to fix this by arranging to dictate her posts into Emacs. As you can imagine, she encountered all sorts of problems along the way but was mainly able to find solutions for them. You can check her post—and Weber’s—to see how they’re doing that.
When I read Chua’s post, I thought, “maybe I should do that too” but then I realized that I don’t want to dictate my text. The truth is, I enjoy writing a lot more than I do speaking and I especially enjoy writing with Emacs. Although it’s not always obvious, I do a lot of revising on my posts as I write them and I usually try to make a final editing pass at least one day after I’ve written them. Speaking, on the other hands, feels more like “one and done” to me. I know that I could dictate a post and then edit the result but it’s not the same. And in any event, as I say, I enjoy writing a lot more than I enjoy talking.
I suppose, as Chua says, the day may come when ever encroaching old age, disease, or accident may make typing hard or impossible and I may be forced to consider dictation but until then, I’m happy to continue typing my text.