Ask McFartnuggets: “When I Use Dragon Naturally Speaking I Can’t Write The Word Period!”

Dear McFartnuggets: 

My aunt got me the Dragon Naturally Speaking software that I can use to turn my words into text. Basically I just speak into the headset and the Dragon writes it out into my word processor. The problem is I’m writing a memoir about my first period and every time I try to write the word “period” Dragon makes an actual period as in a “.” punctuation mark. For example I’ll say “That’s when I knew my . Was for real.” I’m trying to write “That’s when I knew my period was for real” but Dragon doesn’t understand what I’m trying to say. How can I fix this? -- Debbie from Omaha, Nebraska

Dear Debbie:

That does sound like an annoying problem. I think the easiest way around that would be to refer to your period as something else like “menstruation” or “lady flow” or “red tide.” You know, something that says the same thing but isn’t specifically “period.” Then what you can do later is go to the “find and replace” tool in your word processor and find instances of “lady flow” and replace that with “period.” Hopefully that does the trick. Thanks for the question.

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