How to fix text to speech pronunciation on iPhone

Text to speech voices are good at ordinary words and guess at everything else. A fantasy hero, a city that only exists in one book, a romanized Chinese or Korean name, a brand or an acronym: the voice reads what it thinks the letters say, and it says it wrong the same way every time. In Narratorr you fix that with the pronunciation dictionary. Select the word, tap Pronounce, type how it should sound, and save.

This guide covers how to add a fix, how to write a respelling the voice reads the way you mean, the options that stop a fix from changing words it shouldn't, and what the dictionary can't do.

Fix a word in four taps

You fix a word from the page where you heard it, without leaving the book:

1. In the reader, touch and hold the word the voice got wrong to select it. You can extend the selection to a phrase of several words.
2. Tap Pronounce. The editor opens with your selection already filled in.
3. Type how the word should sound: a respelling, written the way you would spell it for a friend who has never seen it.
4. Tap the preview button to hear the respelling in the voice you are using now. If it is right, save it.

The fix applies from the very next paragraph, so you hear the difference almost at once instead of waiting for the next chapter.

More on the reader and its controls is on the support page.

Write a respelling the voice gets right

The dictionary swaps the word for your respelling before the voice reads it. So the respelling has to be something the voice already reads well: ordinary spellings of ordinary sounds.

A few habits help:

• Spell sounds with common words. If a name should rhyme with "bay", end it with "bay", not with an unusual vowel combination the voice will guess at again.
• Break long names into parts. A long invented name is easier for a voice as two or three short chunks, separated by a space or a hyphen. Try both: the preview tells you which one comes out right.
• Spell out letters you want read as letters. For an acronym that should be spelled, write the letters with spaces between them. For one that should be read as a word, write it as a word.
• Preview, then adjust. The first respelling is often close but not quite. Change one part at a time and preview again until it sounds right.
• Keep the respelling short. A respelling that is much longer than the word can change the rhythm of the sentence around it.

Voices differ. A respelling tuned in one voice usually works in the others, but check it once if you switch voices, and especially if you switch to a voice for another language, which may read the same letters differently.

Stop a fix from changing the wrong words

Many names are also ordinary words, or parts of them. A character called Will, a town called Bath, a dragon called Ash. Each dictionary entry has three toggles for this:

• Case-sensitive. The fix applies only when the word is written the way you saved it. "Will" the character changes; "will" the verb doesn't.
• Whole word. The fix applies only to the whole word, not to longer words that contain it. "Ash" changes; "ashes" and "washing" don't.
• On or off. You can switch an entry off without deleting it, for example while you read a different book where the same word is an ordinary word again.

If a fix suddenly shows up somewhere it shouldn't, one of the first two toggles is usually the answer.

It works on every voice and every device

The dictionary isn't tied to one voice. The same entries apply whichever you listen with:

• Online AI, the cloud voices. One free hour, then $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year.
• Offline AI, the voices that run on your iPhone or iPad, free with no limit.
• Device voices, the voices built into iOS, also free.

With iCloud Sync, your dictionary syncs across your devices, so a name you teach on one device is right on the other. You only teach each word once.

The entries are checked quickly, so a dictionary with dozens of names doesn't slow narration down.

The voices and what they cost are on the features and pricing sections of the home page.

Where it helps most

Some books need a lot more fixing than others:

• Web novels and translated fiction. Romanized Chinese, Korean and Japanese names, sect names and cultivation terms appear on every page. The web novels guide covers the rest of listening to them.
• Fantasy and science fiction. Invented names, places and languages, often with apostrophes and unusual letter pairs.
• Research papers and textbooks. Author names, chemical names and acronyms. The research papers guide covers what else the narration skips in a paper.
• Books in other languages. A name from one language inside a book in another. See the guide to listening in other languages.

A handful of entries for the main characters usually fixes most of what bothers you. You don't need to fix every minor name.

What it can't do

The dictionary changes what is said, not how the voice says it:

• It can't change a voice's accent, tone or speed. If the voice itself doesn't suit a book, try another one.
• It can't stress a syllable the voice won't stress. A respelling gets close, but some names stay a little off in some voices.
• It applies to the text the voice reads. A word inside a picture in a book, such as a label on a map, isn't read aloud, so there is nothing to fix.

For anything that sounds wrong and isn't a single word, start with the support page.

Try it on the next name you hear

The next time a voice trips over a name, don't skip ahead. Select it, tap Pronounce, type how it should sound, preview and save. Thirty seconds now saves you hearing it wrong for the rest of the book.

What changed in each release, including when the dictionary got its toggles and iCloud Sync, is in the changelog.