ssml:break Element

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ssml:break Element

An empty element used to control the prosodic boundaries between words.

Syntax

<ssml:break size />
<ssml:break size="enumerated" />
<ssml:break time />
<ssml:break time="varies" />
Attributes

Attribute Description

time

Optional. Specifies the absolute duration of a pause. Values are specified in seconds or milliseconds using the format found in the Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 (CSS2) Specification. Examples of valid values are 2 seconds and 500 ms.

size

Optional. Specifies the relative duration of a pause using one of the following enumeration values: none, small, medium, or large. The value none indicates a normal break boundary. The actual millisecond values (ms) associated with each of the enumeration values are shown in the following table.

The default value is medium.

Enumeration Value

none

10 ms

small

250 ms

medium

1000 ms

large

2500 ms

Remarks

Use this element to override the automatic behavior of the text-to-speech (TTS) engine for a word or phrase if the automatically synthesized speech for that word or phrase sounds unnatural.

For ssml:break elements in which the size or time attribute does not specify a value for the duration of the break, the speech engine automatically determines a duration value based on the linguistic context.

Example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<ssml:speak version="1.0"
 xmlns:ssml="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis"
 xml:lang="en-US">

<ssml:sentence>
The phone number is one eight hundred <ssml:break size="small" />
five five five <ssml:break time="500ms" /> one two three four.
</ssml:sentence>

</ssml:speak>