Pause for m-dash?

[tel]

Hi NextUp,

I'm trialling TextAloud 2.285 and I'm trying (in vain) to make it so the long dash (m-dash, "—") is pronounced as a half second pause. The thing is, the words surrounding the m-dash will usually be hard up against the m-dash.

So using the Pronunciation Editor > Basic Editing, I've tried this:

Word: —
Pronounce As: {{pause=.5}}

and that works for "one — two", but not for "one—two", presumably because it is not finding the m-dash as a separate word. So I tried this regular expression:

Word: {{re=—}}
Pronounce As: {{pause=.5}}

but that doesn't work, but I don't know why.

Any ideas how to get "one—two" to be pronounced with a half second pause between "one" and "two"?

Thanks...TRS

[kremesch]

I haven't had a chance to test it out. But you might want to try:

Word: &—&
Pronounce As: {{pause=0.5}}

[tel]

Awesome response time, and it even worked! Thanks!

BTW: What does "&" mean, exactly? Some kind of boundary marker?

[kremesch]

I'm not the best at explaining things, but I'll give it my best:

The '&' wildcard means to include a character, or characters, either before, after, or both.

In other words, &—& would mean to create the pause when the dash is between one or more characters on either side (ex: one—two, a—b, a—bee, ey—b, etc...).

Whereas, &— would only include the pause if there is a character before, and either a space, or nothing, after (ex: one— ), and —& would include the pause only if there is a character after, and nothing, or a space, before (ex: —two).

Hence, the reason you would only hear the pause if the long dash was preceded, and followed, by spaces was because there was no rule telling it to include anything on either side.

Hopefully that makes sense.

[tel]

Awesome! Thanks.