MS Word Read Aloud voice changes tone

Anonymous
2024-03-20T11:04:45+00:00

I'm using the Read Aloud feature, and the "female" voice changed its tone when it hit this one paragraph. I don't think there's anything special about the text, but the voice changed to sound emotionally elated. Why is it doing this, when I never hear it use emotion anywhere else?

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-03-21T17:36:46+00:00

    If you're in the US and have your preferred language set to English (US), turn on your Read Aloud tool and hear it for yourself.

    I am, and I have, and I use Read Aloud extensively. I also added Microsoft Aria, which is supposedly more natural sounding. The voices recognize basic punctuation.

    The voices in Word can be adjusted for speed. Even a slight adjustment can make a big difference in how they sound.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-03-21T17:15:02+00:00

    The standard voices that Word uses have no ability to detect or portray the tone or emotion in writing. Very simply: They're not that sophisticated. Whatever you are perceiving isn't coming from Word.

    That's simply not true. The natural voices for Read Aloud are trained to speak with inflection and pick up on tone. The changes they have made to the female voice are excessively over the top. If you're in the US and have your preferred language set to English (US), turn on your Read Aloud tool and hear it for yourself.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-03-21T16:46:22+00:00

    I have same issue,

    Sometimes it reads one paragraph whit once voice and next in valley girl voice then again in generic English voice.

    So far what i know is changing proofing language change voice of read out loud. (PS: Canadian English voice is almost ok)

    Also it seems if you let it detect language and you proofing language is one that don't have tts engine support it default to generic English voice what i usually hear and like. but sometimes it detect US English word only and then jump into valley girl voice on that sentence.

    There is no generic English proofing language option so i cant force that voice to be all time what is kind of sad.

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  4. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.2K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2024-03-21T12:03:09+00:00

    I would advise both you and Scott to report this via Help | Feedback. Provide as much detail as you have here to help the product team diagnose the problem.

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-03-21T04:41:24+00:00

    The same thing has happened to me! I’m an author who listens to my book using Read Aloud on iOS. I will sometimes write in the Notes app and then copy and paste the text into Word. I did this just now and the voice changed entirely. It’s now some super perky, almost Valley Girl voice I don’t care for at all. When I click on text written before the voice change (i.e. previous chapters), the old, more traditional voice plays. What in the world is going on?

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