Why Flow capitalizes words mid-sentence, and how to control it

Getting a capital letter mid-sentence, an unexpected period, or words joined together? Check Flow's access to surrounding text and your formatting controls; the available controls differ by platform.

Quick checks

• Is the first word a name? Flow keeps capitals for words it recognizes as proper nouns and otherwise lowercases a mid-sentence start. Dictionaries can remove this protection, not force capitals.

• Does it happen in a native desktop text field? Dictate mid-sentence in macOS Notes or Windows Notepad. If casing is correct there, the issue is app-specific; if it happens there too, continue below.

Restore surrounding-text access on desktop

Mid-sentence blending on Mac needs Accessibility permission. Windows never asks for it.

1. Open the Wispr Flow hub: click the Flow icon in your Mac menu bar or Windows system tray.

2. Allow Wispr Flow in Mac System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility if permission is missing; Flow can open that pane when it shows “Accessibility permission revoked.”

3. Dictate mid-sentence again. If casing now matches, stop; otherwise check the formatting controls below.

Reduce automatic formatting

Smart Formatting controls whether Flow adjusts casing, spacing, and punctuation, and applies per device. On Mac and Windows, you can instead set a per-app format: automatic formatting, unformatted transcription, proper-noun capitals only, or all lowercase — all lowercase affects the entire dictation, including sentence starts.

On iOS, Smart Formatting sits in Personalization, between Audio and Data & Privacy:

1. Open Flow's Settings → Personalization.

2. Turn Smart Formatting off.

3. Dictate a few words into the middle of an existing sentence. You now get raw transcription, with no capitalization or punctuation adjustment. If capitalization is still wrong, check the behaviors below.

How desktop text is adjusted

On Mac and Windows, Flow matches the casing, spacing, and punctuation of the text around your cursor or of your selected text.

• Spaces: Flow adds spaces around your dictation so it reads naturally. Chinese and Japanese text is joined without added spaces; Korean uses normal word spacing.

• Emoji and closing quotes: Text ending in an emoji or a closing quotation mark continues the same sentence, so your dictation stays lowercase and gets a space where needed — “We had fun 😀” + “and then we left”. This includes inline emoji in rich-text editors such as Slack, Gmail, Notion, Discord, and Linear. Emoji that act as punctuation (‼️ ⁉️ ❗ ❕ ❓ ❔), text ending in a period, and a quotation mark that opens a quote (such as (" or said:") still start a new capitalized sentence.

• Empty boxes with placeholder text: On Windows, a box that only shows its own placeholder or label — such as Microsoft Teams' “Type a message” composer — counts as empty, so your first word is capitalized and added with no leading space.

• Selections: Flow matches a lowercase selection start unless dictation starts with a proper noun, preserves surrounding spaces, and carries over a final comma, question mark, or exclamation mark.

• Continuing sentences: When the text after your cursor continues the sentence, Flow drops the ending punctuation from your dictation so the sentence flows on.

• Writing style: Your writing style decides the final period, including in messaging apps. Formal keeps it everywhere, including Slack and Messages; Casual drops it on dictations of up to ten sentences; Very casual drops it on virtually any dictation. Without a style set, the period is dropped only in messaging apps, and only for one- or two-sentence messages. The period is kept when text is selected or the current line already contains ending punctuation; the selection and continuing-sentence rules are independent of style.

iOS keyboard capitalization is separate

If the Flow QWERTY keyboard is available and selected, automatic capitalization applies only to its letter layer — not numbers or symbols — and is independent of Smart Formatting.

• By field type: Sentence fields capitalize at the start of your text and each new sentence or line; word fields capitalize at input start or after whitespace; all-caps fields enable caps lock; username and email fields never capitalize.

• Manual input wins: Automatic capitalization doesn't override manual Shift or caps lock. Shift clears after a character, space, return, or deletion; changing keyboard layers or fields releases caps lock.

• Autocorrect: Autocorrect and double-space-to-period are triggered only by manual key taps, not dictation insertion — but typing a space or punctuation immediately after dictated text can autocorrect the dictated word before your cursor.

If formatting still differs

Still stuck?

Contact support if capitalization remains wrong after reducing formatting, or if only one app is affected. Include your platform, device, app, formatting choice, steps tried, and what you said versus what Flow typed.