Pronunciation error at first word of new par's

[speaktext]

I'm experiencing a problem with the ScanSoft Tom voice that I've not experienced with other voices, such as AT&T Mike.

The voice is mispronouncing the first word of each new paragraph in Microsoft Word by pronouncing only the first letter of the first word, then attempting to pronounce the remainder of the word. After some investigation, I've found that this occurs only when the first word of the new paragraph is preceded by an MS Word paragraph mark at the end of the previous paragraph that is itself preceded by a space after the period at the end of the last sentence in that previous paragraph, instead of only a period. If there is no space prior to the MS WOrd paragraph mark, the error does not occur.

The troublesome space is of course unnecessary, but, as I am editing Word docs written by others, I don't have any control over this, aside from my manually removing the unnecessary spaces from the original document prior to copying them to the TextAloud window.

Is there a solution for this? Or a good workaround?

Thanks!

[D.Leikin]

It seems difficult to duplicate the problem, so it would help a lot if you could give an example pattern causing the trouble.

Something that should probably help automate re-formatting Word documents to get them ready for listening in TextAloud is going Edit->Replace (in MS Word), clicking the ‘More’ button, then clicking the ‘Special’ button to define the pattern (like space+paragraph mark) that needs being edited globally.

[speaktext]

Thanks, I'll post an example in the next day or so. I've decided that it would be best to experiment some with one or two newly created Word documents and also to look into my configuration of the app before posting further. I don't really expect that I'll discover anything that will reveal the cause of this problem, but I want to be sure.

By the way, I don't know exactly what you've tried in order to duplicate this issue, but, to confirm, I've only had this issue with the ScanSoft Tom voice.

George

[speaktext]

Sorry, I accidentally posted this as a new thread instead of a reply to this thread. Here is a copy of the post from the new thread. (Note to Mods: Please delete the post in the new thread and keep this one.)

After some experimentation, I've discovered that there is a particular configuration involving automatic pauses created in the Pronunciation Editor that triggers the error.

If both (not just one or the other) of the following modifications are made in the Basic Pronunciation Editor, then the issue that I described appears:

1. Added pause after periods, e.g., "&." (Word field) and ". {{Pause=0.5}}" (Pronunciation field).

2. Added pause after a Word paragraph mark, e.g., "{{re=(?m)(.)$}}" (Word field) and "$1 {{Pause=1}}" (Pronunciation field).

Note that the error occurs even when the "predefined pause" setting for sentence and paragraph intervals in the TextAloud Options is set to "0".

The following sample text (in between the quotation marks) copied from MS Word, with a single space between the period and paragraph mark of the indicated sentences, will illustrate the issue:

"This is a sentence with a space after the period and before the paragraph character.
This is a sentence without the space after the period.
This is another sentence with a space after the period and before the paragraph character.
Stop test."

Using the above sample text, the letter "T" at the beginning of the first word in the second sentence and the letter "S" at the beginning of the first word in the fourth sentence will be spoken separately, followed by the remainder of the word -- e.g., "S" - "top".

Perhaps I've done something that the software is not designed to do. If so, I'd appreciate it if someone would let me know.

Thanks.

George

p.s. Why can't I edit my posts in this forum?

[D.Leikin]

Hi George,

Still can't duplicate the problem because the forum software seems to have trimmed trailing spaces in your example... but there are couple of simple edits that should probably work with both AT&T and Tom voices. These are

Pause after sentence (1 second in this example):

Word: {{re=\x2E(\x20)}}
Pronunciation: . {{pause=1}}

Pause after paragraph (3 seconds in this example. Supposed to work for any number of spaces after the full stop):

Word: {{re=\x2E\x20*(\x0D)}}
Pronunciation: . {{pause=3}}

So in both cases, pronunciation syntax is [FULL STOP] [SPACE] [pause tag]

Hope that helps resolve the issue

Del

PS The downside is the above expressions may interfere with highlighting.

[speaktext]

Del,
Thank you for your alternative edit. I'll try it and see what happens.

By the way, it was my assumption that you would be typing either my brief sample text or some brief sample text of your own choosing into MS Word, using the single space after a period but before the end of the line (paragraph mark) as indicated in my sample text, and then copying it into TextAloud (as opposed to copying text from my post, which I infer is what you did). If you want to duplicate the problem, that would be the way to do it.

George

[D.Leikin]

Thanks George, I sure had done that trying to duplicate the problem.

[J-Mac]

First, I apologize for resurrecting an older thread.

I just installed Scansoft Samantha and encountered the exact same issue. I had no idea what to look for as possible causes for the split pronunciation of the first word after a paragraph break. Also I did not think to look at how the previous sentence ended with regard to the space before the paragraph break.

I want to thank George for catching this and bringing it to the forum, and also Del for coming up with perfect solutions, as he usually does!

Great forum! Thank both of you!

Jim