Here are some great tips for improving the experience:
- using a comma or full stop will cause a small pause and sometimes change the emphasis of the prior word
- changing the order of words can subtly affect the pronunciation
- every 100 characters the speech will make a pause if it encounters a comma or full stop before then it will start the 100 count again
- using quotes around words can change their pronunciation
- putting words together like TinCan will improve the pronunciation
- putting words together with a hyphen can improve the pronunciation
- letters on their own are spoken well as in X A P I whereas API will be said as ‘appy’
These are tips for the Google Chrome Voices, tricks may perform differently on Apple Voices, however our tests have shown the above perform consistently well on the cross platform ResponsiveVoices.
Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML)
HTML5 voices do not support Markup for changing accent or emphasis. Other audio file rendering speech engines (NeoSpeech, Loquendo, iSpeech) do use differing Markup standards for improving intonation and emphasis, Voice Markup is a part of the HTML5 specification but this is not a part of browsers and there is no timeline (or announced commitment) to including it in future browsers (yet). When Markup does get added to browsers ResponsiveVoice library will include it for all to benefit from.