Adding a pause - Amazon Polly
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Adding a pause

<break>

This tag is supported by generative, long-form, neural, and standard TTS formats.

To add a pause to your text, use the <break> tag. You can set a pause based on strength (equivalent to the pause after a comma, a sentence, or a paragraph), or you can set it to a specific length of time in seconds or milliseconds. If you don't specify an attribute to determine the pause length, Amazon Polly uses the default, which is <break strength="medium"/>, which adds a pause the length of a pause after a comma.

strength attribute values:

  • none: No pause. Use none to remove a normally occurring pause, such as after a period.

  • x-weak: Has the same strength as none, no pause.

  • weak: Sets a pause of the same duration as the pause after a comma.

  • medium: Has the same strength as weak.

  • strong: Sets a pause of the same duration as the pause after a sentence.

  • x-strong: Sets a pause of the same duration as the pause after a paragraph.

time attribute values:

  • [number]s: The duration of the pause, in seconds. The maximum duration is 10s.

  • [number]ms: The duration of the pause, in milliseconds. The maximum duration is 10000ms.

For example:

<speak>
     Mary had a little lamb <break time="3s"/>Whose fleece was white as snow.
</speak>

If you don't use an attribute with the break tag, the result varies depending on text:

  • If there is no other punctuation next to the break tag, it creates a <break strength="medium"/> (comma-length pause).

  • If the tag is next to a comma, it upgrades the tag to a <break strength="strong"/> (sentence-length pause).

  • If the tag is next to a period, it upgrades the tag to <break strength="x-strong"/> (paragraph-length pause).