How to dictate punctuation on a Mac
Short answer: there are two ways to get punctuation when you dictate on a Mac. You can speak each mark by name, saying "comma" for a comma and "period" or "full stop" for a full stop, which is how Apple Dictation has always worked. Or you can let a modern speech model place the punctuation for you while you just talk in sentences. Apple Dictation now does the common marks automatically on Apple Silicon, and apps built on newer models do it for everything. This is part of the wider picture in the guide to on-device dictation for Mac. Below is the spoken-command list, how auto-punctuation works, and when each approach fits.
The spoken punctuation commands
With Apple Dictation you can say the name of a punctuation mark and it types the symbol instead of the word. These are the marks people reach for most often. Apple keeps the full reference, including math, currency and formatting commands, in its commands for dictating text support page.
| You say | You get |
|---|---|
| period / full stop | . |
| comma | , |
| question mark | ? |
| exclamation mark | ! |
| apostrophe | ’ |
| colon | : |
| semicolon | ; |
| open parenthesis | ( |
| close parenthesis | ) |
| quote … end quote | “ … ” |
| hyphen | - |
| dash | – |
| ellipsis | … |
| at sign | @ |
| ampersand | & |
| new line | Starts a new line |
| new paragraph | Starts a new paragraph |
The command grammar is forgiving in places: "period", "point", "dot" and "full stop" all produce a full stop, which helps if you switch between US and British habits. The trade is that you are reading punctuation aloud as you go, so a sentence like "Dear Sam, thanks for the note." becomes "Dear Sam comma thanks for the note period." That is the older model of dictation, and it is still the reliable fallback when an automatic system gets a mark wrong.
Auto-punctuation: when you just talk
On a modern Apple Silicon Mac in a supported language, Apple Dictation inserts commas, periods and question marks for you as you dictate. You speak in natural sentences and the marks appear without your saying them. Apple ties this to the on-device model, which is why it works best on newer Macs, and the language coverage is listed on Apple’s feature-availability pages rather than promised everywhere.
If you want to switch it off, open the Apple menu, choose System Settings, click Keyboard in the sidebar, then go to Dictation and turn off Auto-punctuation. With it off you are back to speaking every mark by name. Most people leave it on for the three common marks and only say the punctuation it does not place, such as a colon before a list or parentheses around an aside.
The honest limit of Apple’s auto-punctuation is that it covers commas, periods and question marks, and not the rest. Colons, semicolons, dashes, parentheses and quotation marks still need spoken commands. So in practice you end up mixing the two modes inside a single passage, which is the friction this feature was meant to remove.
How Parakeety handles punctuation
Parakeety takes the second approach all the way. It runs NVIDIA’s Parakeet TDT 0.6B v3 model on the Apple Neural Engine, and that model writes punctuation as part of transcribing your speech. You hold the key, talk in whole sentences, release, and the text pastes at the cursor already punctuated. There is no command vocabulary to learn, because the marks come from the model reading the shape of the sentence rather than from keywords you recite.
The difference is which marks get covered. Where Apple’s auto-punctuation does the three common ones and leaves the rest to spoken commands, a model that punctuates as it transcribes places commas, full stops, question marks and the marks inside the sentence too. You write the way you talk and read it back as finished prose. The practical effect is that you stop thinking about punctuation at all, which is the point most people are after when they ask how to dictate punctuation in the first place.
None of this needs the network. Parakeety transcribes entirely on your Mac, so the punctuation is computed on-device alongside the words. We cover the broader setup, the dictation key and the paste-at-the-cursor flow in the walkthrough on getting dictation working on a Mac.
When each approach fits
The two models of punctuation suit different work. Here is the short version.
| Approach | Best for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Spoken commands | Precise control over every mark; technical text with brackets, colons and dashes; correcting what an automatic system got wrong | You read punctuation aloud, which slows the flow and breaks the rhythm of a sentence |
| Apple auto-punctuation | Casual sentences and messages where commas, periods and question marks are most of what you need | Covers only those three marks; everything else still needs a spoken command, so you mix modes |
| Model-written punctuation | Real drafting at length: notes, emails, documents where you want to talk in prose and read back finished text | You give up the per-mark control of spoken commands; you edit afterward rather than dictating each symbol |
A simple rule: if you are writing one or two sentences and want exact symbols, the spoken commands give you that control. If you are drafting at any length, talking in sentences and letting the model punctuate is faster and reads better, and you fix the occasional mark by hand afterward. For a direct comparison of the two on the same Mac, the head-to-head on Parakeety against Apple Dictation walks through where each one wins.
Where punctuation matters most
The work that exposes the difference is structured writing, where punctuation carries meaning rather than decoration. Clinical notes are the clearest case: a SOAP entry leans on colons, lists and clean sentence boundaries, and reading every mark aloud is exactly the overhead that makes dictation feel slower than typing. Model-written punctuation removes that, which is why we walk through it in the guide to dictating clinical notes against a SOAP template. The same logic applies to legal drafting, structured emails and any document where the punctuation is part of the content.
FAQ
- How do I dictate a comma and a period on a Mac?
- You can say the punctuation by name as you dictate: say "comma" to type a comma and say "period" (or "full stop") to type a full stop. But on a modern Apple Silicon Mac in a supported language, Apple Dictation now inserts commas, periods and question marks automatically as you talk, so you often do not need to say them at all. You only fall back to speaking the marks for punctuation the model will not place for you, such as colons, dashes or parentheses.
- What are the main Mac dictation punctuation commands?
- Common ones are: "period" or "full stop" for a full stop, "comma" for a comma, "question mark", "exclamation mark", "apostrophe", "colon", "semicolon", "open parenthesis" and "close parenthesis", "quote" and "end quote", "hyphen", "dash", "ellipsis", "at sign" and "ampersand". For line breaks you say "new line" to start a new line or "new paragraph" to start a new paragraph. The full list lives in Apple Support; this guide reproduces the most-used commands as a table.
- How do I turn off auto-punctuation in Apple Dictation?
- Open the Apple menu, choose System Settings, click Keyboard in the sidebar, then go to Dictation and turn off Auto-punctuation. With it off, Apple Dictation stops inserting commas, periods and question marks for you, and you have to speak every mark by name. Most people leave it on and only speak the punctuation it does not handle automatically.
- Does Parakeety need spoken punctuation commands?
- No. Parakeety runs NVIDIA’s Parakeet TDT v3 speech model on the Apple Neural Engine, and the model writes punctuation as part of transcribing. You hold the key, talk in natural sentences, release, and the text pastes at the cursor already punctuated. There is no command grammar to memorize, because the punctuation comes from the model understanding the sentence rather than from spoken keywords.
Try it
Parakeety is a Mac menu-bar app. Hold the section key, talk in natural sentences, release; your words paste at the cursor already punctuated, with no commands to recite. Audio never leaves the machine. There is a free 7-day trial with no card required. After that it is $30 once.