[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.

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