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Dictating fiction

Dictionaries

Dictionaries are how Murmurtale learns the words that only exist in your book.

What dictionaries do

A dictionary is a named set of terms — character names, places, objects, organizations, call signs, ships, invented species, and so on. Its terms bias transcription toward your spelling and steer the cleanup pass, so "Volkov" stops coming out as "Volkoff" or "vol cough."

Open dictionaries from the menu (⌘D). Each dictionary can be turned on or off independently, so a fantasy world's names do not leak into a thriller.

A dictionary of your book's proper nouns, each with an optional pronunciation hint.

Sounds-like hints

For stubborn mishears, add a sounds-like hint — what the engine tends to hear. Pairing the canonical spelling "Volkov" with the hint "VOL-kof" fixes it reliably. You can set a term's kind (character, place, weapon, ship, and more) to help Murmurtale apply it in context.

Scoping to a mode

Each dictionary has a scope: Fiction only, Plain only, or Both modes. A set of character names should not bias your work email, and a work vocabulary should not push into your prose — scoping keeps them apart. Your own name or a company you mention everywhere fits "Both."

Suggestions and learning

If you point Murmurtale at your existing manuscripts, it analyzes them and suggests terms to add. With "Learn from my edits" on, it also watches how you correct dictated proper nouns and either suggests those corrections (the default) or auto-adds the confident ones. You can turn the observer off entirely.