Is it possible to spell a word to Siri? For instance, if I ask for the stock price of a certain company, she doesn't always understand the company name.
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Great question. Siri is choking on my wife's name "Anne" using "and" or "an" instead. I'd love to be able to audibly spell or mark "Anne" but don't know a way to do it, yet. – Richard Nov 06 '11 at 12:45
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Quite frankly, I was totally surprised that Siri was released without a this. In my mind, spelling with code words: "codespell" "apple" "nancy" "nancy" "elephant" "end", to produce ANNE. That may seem like a lot but if you're in a car driving at 50 mph it is suddenly very practical. – Jun 09 '12 at 22:41
6 Answers
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Try saying: "no caps on, no space on", then spell the word, then say "no caps off, no space off".
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This works well Thanks. . Siri seems to understand spelt out words. But will put them in Caps and possibly add spaces. Hence "no caps on, no space on" – markhunte Jun 10 '12 at 09:06
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I tried this on iOS 9. It didn't work very well. It seems that Siri reverts to the default behavior automatically after one phrase instead of preserving the no caps on, no space on mode. – Matt McClure Nov 22 '16 at 15:11
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iOS 15 seems not to need "no space on", just "no caps on/off". In addition, a word needs to be spelled quickly; otherwise it is usually misinterpreted. – Alper Nov 22 '21 at 05:57
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Actually you can. Try saying letter E letter F Letter G and so on. Similarly, you can also say Numeral five if you want to type 5.
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To me, to spell out anything short, this is a bit more natural than saying "no caps on, no space on". – zgall1 Jun 15 '22 at 18:52
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You can say no caps on and no space on and then spell a word, letter by letter, followed by no caps off and no space off and Siri will understand that you spelt a word out for it to interpret.
You can see this in practice in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMNLV-qeou4
The context of the video is spelling words in Notes.app, so it's not clear if this works in all Siri contexts.
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2This contains the same information as the currently-accepted answer on this question. It should probably be an edit to add the video to that answer, not a wholly new answer. – Ian C. Oct 05 '15 at 20:28
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Custom responses and informing Siri of specific words or spellings is not possible at the moment, but Apple itself has stressed that Siri is in beta status. That's not a label they use lightly, so I'd expect big improvements down the road.
Cajunluke
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David Metcalfe
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It doesn't work reliably but there are a few commands for spelling things out in Siri. Here's an article about it: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/20/how-to-type-comma-using-siri/
It sounds like some Dragon Dictate commands work.
