How to emphasize in Eleven Labs text to speech?

[Raveen Paswan]

When using ElevenLabs text-to-speech, how can I make certain words more expressive or emotional? Is there a way to add emphasis through tags or formatting?

[Rohan Patel]

Hey! Great question, if you’ve used ElevenLabs for text-to-speech, you probably noticed how smooth and human-like it sounds. But yeah, sometimes you want it to emphasise a word or add more emotion, and it’s not immediately obvious how to do that.

Here’s what’s worked for me:

Use punctuation smartly

Believe it or not, commas, dashes, ellipses, and periods can totally change the tone.
For example:

• “I really like it.” vs. “I… really like it.”
  
• The second one sounds slower and more thoughtful.
  
• Try adding pauses before or after a word you want to highlight.
  

Use repetition or stretch spelling

If you want a word to stand out, try stretching it:

• “soooo good”
  Or repeat for effect:

• “Yes, yes, yes!”

Capitalise selectively (use with care)

Sometimes capitalizing a word helps draw vocal stress to it. like:

• “This is AMAZING.”
  but don’t overdo it — it can sound unnatural if every other word is in caps.

Adjust voice settings if available

In the VoiceLab or custom settings, you can tweak stability, similarity, and sometimes style sliders.

For more dramatic delivery, try lowering stability — it adds natural variation.

No SSML support (yet)

As of now, ElevenLabs doesn’t support SSML tags, so no <emphasis> or <prosody> options like other tools. Everything is done through text formatting and pacing.

Hope that helps! play around with tone and rhythm — sometimes small tweaks make a big difference in how expressive it sounds.

[akashraj]

So, a few weeks ago, I was playing around with Eleven Labs you know, the AI voice tool everyone’s talking about. It’s pretty awesome, don’t get me wrong. But the first few times I used it, something felt. off.

The voice sounded fine, but it didn’t feel like a person talking. It was like reading from a page with zero emotion. And I was like, “Okay, how do I fix this without learning some complicated coding stuff?”

Well, turns out, you don’t need any special tricks. You just need to write the way people actually talk.

Here’s what I figured out:

Write with tone in mind.
If you want something to sound excited or surprised, type it that way. Like, “Are you SERIOUS?” (Caps help just don’t overdo it.)

Play with pauses.
Commas, dashes, ellipses those little marks do a lot. Want a pause for effect? Add it.
Example: “Wait… what just happened?”

Stretch your words.
It sounds silly, but it works. “No” or “Yes” gives the voice a more dramatic tone. I use this one a lot.

Break it up.
Short sentences help with pacing. When the voice reads them, it sounds more natural.
Like:
“This can not be real.
But it is.”

Honestly, once I started typing the way I talk, everything changed. The voice became way more believable.

So yeah, you don not need fancy tools. Just trust your ear and write like you are having a real convo. That’s what worked for me.

[Author]

Posts