diff --git a/egs/tedlium/s5_r3/local/join_suffix.py b/egs/tedlium/s5_r3/local/join_suffix.py
new file mode 100755
index 00000000000..64c62964331
--- /dev/null
+++ b/egs/tedlium/s5_r3/local/join_suffix.py
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python
+#
+# Copyright  2014  Nickolay V. Shmyrev
+#            2016  Johns Hopkins University (author: Daniel Povey)
+# Apache 2.0
+
+
+import sys
+from codecs import open
+
+# This script joins together pairs of split-up words like "you 're" -> "you're".
+# The TEDLIUM transcripts are normalized in a way that's not traditional for
+# speech recognition.
+
+for line in sys.stdin:
+    items = line.split()
+    new_items = []
+    i = 1
+    while i < len(items):
+        if i < len(items) - 1 and items[i+1][0] == '\'':
+            new_items.append(items[i] + items[i+1])
+            i = i + 1
+        else:
+            new_items.append(items[i])
+        i = i + 1
+    print(items[0] + ' ' + ' '.join(new_items))