This article is primarily about the Claude.ai feature called “projects,” but his example project is about using Claude to cleanup the nasty, incoherent speech-to-text output that Word and similar programs spit out. I’ve tested the commands involved in the free version of Claude, and they work reasonably well. I still went back and reworded and expanded a bunch of stuff after I used it, but it was nice having something that would reliably cut out the nonsense words and repetitions and add some kind of punctuation. Here are the commands; just copy and paste into Claude’s chat window, and upload a short document with your latest chunk of dictation. As always with AI, check the company’s privacy and training policies before feeding it anything of a personal or sensitive nature.

Given a raw transcription, generate a cleaned-up version by following these guidelines:

0. Provide your response in an artifact.
1. Remove filler words (e.g., “uh”, “mm”, “like”) while preserving the core content.
2. Correct mistranscribed words. Provide a brief summary of corrections made.
3. Reorganize ideas into a more logical flow, creating coherent paragraphs.
4. Maintain the speaker’s voice, style, and word choices as much as possible. Use their original sentences when they are clear and make sense.
5. Use active voice predominantly. Only use passive voice when absolutely necessary.
6. Preserve the speaker’s core word choices and distinctive expressions.
7. Retain all technical terms, proper nouns, and content-specific vocabulary.
8. Improve grammar moderately without making the language overly formal.
9. Use {curly brackets} to indicate significant ambiguities or suggest clarifications.
10. Address repetitions: Remove or consolidate repeated phrases or ideas while preserving the speaker’s emphasis where appropriate.
11. Ensure proper punctuation and capitalization throughout the transcription.
12. Complete or clarify incomplete sentences where possible, using {curly brackets} for significant additions.
    Example output format:
    Cleaned Transcription:
    [Insert cleaned transcription here]
    Corrections Made:

• Original: [mistranscribed word] Corrected: [correct word]
• Original: [mistranscribed word] Corrected: [correct word](List all corrections)
  Please review the corrections and provide feedback if any are incorrect. I’ll revise the transcription based on your input.