Speech and finished writing are not the same artifact
Natural speech contains pauses, restarts, filler words, and corrections that help a listener follow the thought in real time. On the page, those same cues often become clutter. Smart transcription treats speech as drafting material; verbatim transcription treats it as a record.
Neither approach is universally better. The right choice depends on whether you are composing new text or preserving spoken language.
Use Smart mode when the destination is finished prose
Smart mode removes common fillers, follows corrections, and formats punctuation, dates, and numbers for readability. If you say, “Meet Tuesday—sorry, Wednesday at three,” the useful output is usually “Meet Wednesday at 3:00.”
This mode is a strong default for email, messages, project updates, notes, and first drafts. It reduces cleanup while keeping the meaning of the turn.
- Email and chat replies
- Meeting notes written in your own words
- Drafts, outlines, and task descriptions
- Text where spoken self-corrections should disappear
Use Verbatim mode when the wording itself is evidence
Verbatim mode stays closer to the original speech. It is useful when recording a quotation, capturing an interview note, drafting dialogue, studying speech patterns, or preserving a rough thought before editing it yourself.
Verbatim does not mean a forensic transcript with speaker labels or word-level timestamps. It means Quill avoids the stronger rewriting behavior of Smart mode and keeps more of the spoken phrasing.
Custom vocabulary helps both modes hear the right words
Transcription style controls cleanup; vocabulary controls recognition hints. Add uncommon names, technical terms, acronyms, and product language that the model may otherwise replace with a more common phrase.
A short, focused vocabulary list is more useful than a dictionary dump. Include terms that are both important and genuinely easy to mishear.
Switch modes by task, not by identity
You do not have to decide whether you are a “smart” or “verbatim” user. Choose Smart before writing a polished reply, switch to Verbatim before capturing a quotation, and change back when the task changes. The global shortcut stays the same; only the treatment of the final text changes.