markup.md

SSML and HTML Support

• SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language)
  • speak
  • voice
  • prosody
  • say-as
  • mark
  • s
  • p
  • sub
  • tts:style
  • audio
  • emphasis
  • break
• HTML
• References
  • SSML
  • HTML

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SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language)

SSML consists of XML-like tags, for example: Did you mean the <emphasis level="strong"><prosody pitch="75">green</prosody></emphasis> beans?

The following markup tags and attributes are recognised:

speak

• xml:base (the value is just passed back as a parameter with the UriCallback() function)
• xml:lang

voice

• xml:lang
• name
• age
• variant
• gender

prosody

• rate (x-slow, slow, medium, fast, x-fast or a percentage such as 125%)
• volume (silent, x-soft, soft, medium, loud, x-loud, +1dB or -1dB)
• pitch (a number, for example "75")
• range (default, x-low, low, medium, high, x-high)

say-as

• interpret-as="characters"
• interpret-as="characters" format="glyphs"
• interpret-as="tts:key"
• interpret-as="tts:char"
• interpret-as="tts:digits"

mark

• name

s

• xml:lang

p

• xml:lang

sub

• alias

tts:style

• field="punctuation" mode=none,all,some
• field="capital_letters" mode=no,spelling,icon,pitch

audio

• src

emphasis

• level (none, reduced, moderate, strong or x-strong)

break

• strength
• time

HTML

eSpeak can speak HTML text directly, or text containing both SSML and HTML markup.
Any unrecognised tags are ignored.

The following tags cause a sentence break:

• br
• dd
• li
• img
• td

The following tags cause a paragraph break:

• h1
• h2
• h3
• h4
• hr

Text between the following tags is ignored:

• script
• style

References

SSML

1. Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.0. W3C Recommendation, 3 March 2009. W3C.
2. Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Version 1.1. W3C Recommendation, 7 September 2010. W3C.
3. SSML 1.0 say-as attribute values. W3C NOTE, 26 May 2005. W3C.

HTML

1. HTML 5.2. W3C Recommendation, 14 December 2017. W3C.
2. HTML Living Standard. Continually updated. WHATWG.