Add intonation to the AI voice

The AI voice reads your text in a natural, neutral way. Sometimes a passage asks for more: a line the artist whispered, a letter read as a quotation, a surprising fact told with excitement. Intonations let you mark those words so the AI voice reads them in that way, then goes back to its normal reading.

Add an intonation

1. 1

   Open the artwork and the language you want to work on.

2. 2

   Select the words inside a paragraph. A small Intonation bubble appears above them. With the keyboard, select the words and press Ctrl+Shift+E (⌘⇧E on a Mac).

3. 3

   Press Intonation. The menu How should it be read? opens.

4. 4

   Choose one of the ways of reading, or write your own under Another way and press Apply.

The marked words are underlined. Hover over them to see how they will be read, for example «Read whispering». Each paragraph also lists its intonations under the text.

Ways of reading

Another way accepts a few words of your own, up to 40 characters, such as «like an epic narrator». English works best, for example «dramatic». The AI voice interprets them, so listen to the result.

Change or remove an intonation

• Click inside marked words: the bubble shows how they are read, with a pencil to Change the intonation and a cross to Remove the intonation.
• In the list under the paragraph, press the cross next to an intonation to remove it. This works with the keyboard and screen readers too.
• Marking words that overlap an existing intonation replaces it on those words.
• If you edit marked words, the intonation follows them: it grows or shrinks with the text, and disappears if you delete all its words.

A paragraph can have up to 20 intonations. In practice, one or two in a whole artwork usually have more effect than many.

What visitors see and hear

Intonations are stored next to the text, never inside it. Visitors read exactly the text you wrote, with no tags or symbols, and the character count and the search ignore them. Only the AI voice uses them.

When you translate with AI, each intonation is carried over to the matching words of the translation. You can change or remove it there like in the original.

Audio and cost

Adding, changing or removing an intonation is free, but the paragraph's existing AI audio was made without it. So the paragraph becomes Out of date and you need to generate it again, at the usual cost of 1 credit per paragraph. See Generate the AI voice and Out-of-date audio.

• An intonation does not change the text, so translations of the paragraph stay up to date.
• Recordings are not affected: intonations only apply to the AI voice. When you record, read the passage the way you want it.