pause

The pause, pause-before and pause-after properties specify how long to pause before or after the browser speaks the tag. You use pauses in your content to control the pace of the presentation and draw a listener's attention when needed. The idea is that the browser handles punctuation, i.e it will know how to pauses for full stops, commas, and such like. You can set up any extra pauses.

The pause-before property pauses before and the pause-after property pauses after the tag. These properties can be applied to any element in your document.

You can specify the time as a value or as a percentage of the length of time it takes to speak a word. For example:

h1 {pause-before: 25ms}
h1 {pause-after: 25ms}

Absolute times are expressed in seconds (abbreviated s) or milliseconds (abbreviated ms). For example, to pause for three seconds before each major header in your document, you might say:

h1 { pause-before : 3s }

If you want a 20 millisecond pause after each paragraph:

p { pause-after : 20ms }

Relative values are set as a percentage of the speech rate. A 100 percent pause is equal to the length of one word. If the speech rate is set to 120 words per minute, a single word takes a half-second. If you enter a value of 100% for pause-after and the speech-rate is 60 words per minute, the browser would pause for one second after it speaks the text.

As with most properties, relative values are usually safer to use. As the speech rate of your document is changed, your pauses will grow and shrink to match the change. Your listener should experience a more consistent audio experience as a result.

Pause is the short hand property (like font) if you give one value it pauses before and after the tag. If you provide two values, the first becomes the pause-before value, and the second becomes the pause-after value.