Punctuation

How punctuation drives prosody — pauses, intonation, questions, and emphasis — in Rime’s TTS output.

Punctuation drives prosody in Rime’s TTS output. Beyond the standard structural role (sentence breaks, questions), Rime’s models use punctuation as the primary lever for controlling pause length, intonation, and emphasis. The examples below show what’s possible.

For a tour of text normalization across all categories, see Text normalization. For precise pause durations on Mist, see Custom pauses.

Punctuation as prosody cues

Rime’s models treat each punctuation mark as a prosodic cue:

• Comma (,). Short pause, slight rise in pitch. Use inside sentences for list items, appositives, and clauses.
• Period (.). Sentence-ending pause with falling pitch.
• Question mark (?). Rising intonation.
• Ellipsis (...). Trailing, hesitant pause.
• Semicolon (;). Slightly longer than a comma, shorter than a period.

Avoid hyphens and dashes inside numbers, IDs, or phone numbers when prosody matters. They’re one of the most common sources of unwanted pauses. Use spaces or spell() instead.

Questions

Audio clip	Sentence	Notes
	what do you mean.	A simple period at the end of the sentence renders it a non-question.
	what do you mean?	A simple question mark indicates an unmarked question.
	what do you mean?!	Adding an exclamation point makes the question more excited.
	what do you mean!?	Reversing the order produces a different sort of question.
	what do you mean??	Multiple question marks change the type of question prosody.

False starts

Audio clip	Sentence	Notes
	i i think it’s pretty cool	Repeating a word can create more realistic, flawed human speech.
	i- i think it’s pretty cool	A dash immediately after a word can give a cut-off, false-start sort of realism.

Pauses

Audio clip	Sentence	Notes
	so it’s kind of funny.	Without any comma, there will be no pause.
	so, it’s kind of funny.	A comma creates a slight pause.
	so. it’s kind of funny.	A period creates a longer pause.

For pauses of a specific duration on Mist, use the pauseBetweenBrackets parameter — see Custom pauses.

Common prosody problems and fixes

Problem	Likely cause	Fix
Pause lands inside a phone number	Digits separated by dashes	Use spaces or spell()
Weird pause before a currency amount	$ glued to digits	Rewrite naturally or add whitespace
Run-on sentence, no breath	Single long sentence, no internal commas	Break into shorter sentences or add commas at natural clause boundaries
Unnatural upward inflection mid-sentence	Comma where there shouldn’t be one	Remove the comma, or replace with a conjunction
Abrupt transition between ideas	No sentence boundary	Add a period and start a new sentence

Related

• Custom pauses for precise pause durations on Mist
• Spell function for forced letter-by-letter reading without unwanted pauses
• Text normalization for the full normalization overview