How can I fix missing spaces when using Dictation with MacVim or Terminal?
TL; DR

This issue appears to be MacVim-specific. Try using Vim 7.4.889 or later instead.

Analysis and Work-Arounds

I have experienced this same issue on both Yosemite and El Capitan with MacVim-snapshot-77. For example, in MacVim:


  I pause hereAnd dictation doesn't add a space.


However, I only experience this problem in MacVim and the versions of gvim and mvim that the MacVim package provides. Vim 7.4.889 (as installed via Homebrew) and Terminal.app with various versions of Bash seem to work fine for me on OS X 10.11 (El Capitan). 

In case your settings are different, I have enabled:


Dictation &amp; Speech -> Dictation -> Use Enhanced Dictation
Accessibility -> Dictation -> Dictation Commands -> Enable advanced commands


This appears to be something hard-wired in MacVim. Even if you define a custom dictation command for MacVim such as "literal space" and assign it the space character, MacVim with Enhanced Dictation always seems to treat pauses as the start of a new sentence. I would recommend filing a bug against MacVim.

While it won't fix the underlying problem with MacVim, you can work around the issue by doing your dictation in a Terminal-based Vim session using a different build. Since the problem appears to be MacVim rather than Vim, this seems like the most pragmatic short-term solution until MacVim is fixed.