I pasted in a block of text and ran the text to speech option. It works well until the last sentence where it adds the word "Dot" to the audio clip. If I take the last period out, it still adds "Dot". If I delete a couple of sentences back, the word "Dot" disappears. Anyone else have this happen?

I had a coworker run into this problem yesterday. His workaround was to break up the paragraph (e.g., put half of it on a new line in the text entry or to paragraph break each sentence onto a new line) and text-to-speech will no longer say "dot." While not an ideal solution, it works for now. It seems like it's being caused by an odd paragraph character limit. I've attached a file where I tested the paragraph character limit with lorem ipsum filler text.

Hi Bob, I had the same experience with a particularly long block of text -- I could get the behavior to stop if I took away enough of the text, but removing any of the content permanently wasn't really an option. So, my guess is that it has something to do with length of text. But, you can use the audio editor (click the speaker icon on your slide, go to Audio Tools on the top-bar when it appears) and manually edit out the last couple of seconds where the "dot" appears.

Bob I've never seen this happen, but I haven't used text to speech in a month or so. Let me play around and see if it happens to me.

My guess is there was a hiccup in the text or the program. I just went back and cleared all the text out, dropped it into notepad and then hand typed the text. Also made a new story with the old text. Maybe it has something to do with the amount. I have no clue at this point.

Sometimes Articulate can get buggy. I remember on one learning I was working on, I had text animating in by paragraph, and for some reason when a new paragraph came in, the last line of the previous paragraph would ALSO animate in again, and appear thicker. Had to delete and redo the text box.

Text to speech adding the word "Dot" to end of audio file.

JanetBranson-b3
Community Member
6 years ago
I had the same problem today. So I created a cue point right before the 'dot' in the audio. Then I created a trigger to pause the timeline at the cue point.
AshleyT-Pollard
Staff
6 years ago
Thanks, Janet for sharing that idea. Another workaround our team spotted is to add a carriage return to longer strings of text. We're continuing to investigate this, so we'll keep you posted.
HeineeHinric202
Community Member
5 years ago
Can you please fix the software bug so there isn't a character limit. I am also having the same problem with the word dot at the end of the long paragraph. This shouldn't be the case. If I have a really long paragraph I shouldn't be limited to a specific number of characters.
RenGomez
Staff
5 years ago
Hi Heinee,

Thanks for checking in. I'm sorry that you ran into the issue where you hear the word "dot" at the end of your paragraph.

It is currently in the early stages of review based on our How We Tackle Bugs article. To help you plan, it's unlikely to be fixed in the next couple of updates.

For now, have you tried the workaround Ashley mentioned above about adding a carriage return to see if that helps the issue? We'll pop back in here when there's any progress to share.
MelanieSobie-14
Community Member
5 years ago
I had this happen in my last project and I figured out what the issue was. There was a blank line after the last sentence that had bullet list format applied I couldn’t see the bullet point since there was no text on that line, but the text to speech read it out as dot.
SusanLow-77a7d0
Community Member
4 years ago
The "dot" sound can appear any where in the sentence and at the end of the text to speech. Had it removed and it kept appearing itself. How can I get rid of the "dot" permanently?
- KatieRiggio
  Staff
  4 years ago
  Good morning, Susan!
  
  I'm sorry you're affected by this bug.
  
  We narrowed the cause down to the character length. If the text exceeds 1000 characters, then the word "dot" is read. We'll update you as soon as we know more!
  
  For now, one way to prevent "dot" from being read is to include a carriage return in strings of text that exceed a character count of 1000.
  
  If that doesn't help, we'd love to troubleshoot the affected file. Simply use this link to open a case, and we'll take it from there!
JoseTansengco
Staff
2 years ago
Hello Everyone!

I have some great news to share. We just released another update for Storyline 360. In Update 74, we’ve included important fixes and new features.

One of the bugs that was fixed was an issue where "the Text-to-Speech feature was adding audible 'dot' to generated audio if single line of text exceeds 1000ish characters".

To take advantage of this update, launch the Articulate 360 desktop app on your computer and click the Update button next to Storyline 360. You'll find our step-by-step instructions here.

Please let me know if you need additional help!
- PankajSrivas257
  Community Member
  8 months ago
  I am facing the same "dot" issue today.
LucianaPiazza
Staff
8 months ago
Hi Pankaj,

Thanks for reaching out. Sorry to hear you're experiencing this. I was unable to replicate this behavior on my end.

What is the current character count for the text-to-speech file?

Could you share what voice you are currently using?

Are you experiencing this behavior if you try to recreate this in a brand new .story file?

If you're still running into this issue, feel free to share your .story file with us in this thread or privately in a support case.

Looking forward to hearing from you!
- PankajSrivas257
  Community Member
  8 months ago
  Please find the attached file. Issue is replicating at my end even though I am putting text in notepad and than pasting it in the text- to-speech box.
  audio-dot-issue.story139 KB
  - LaurenDuvall
    Staff
    8 months ago
    Hi Pankaj!
    
    Thank you so much for sharing your project file! I was able to see exactly what you're experiencing. Are you copying text from the Windows Notepad? This appears to be a bug so I'll share this with our team, but I did find a workaround. You'll want to:
    
    Remove the period in the Text to Speech box.
    
    Select Update
    
    Return to the Text to Speech box and add in a period.
    
    After that, the audible "dot" was removed.
    
    I've recorded a Peek to show you my steps if you'd like to see my testing. We'll keep you updated on the progress of this bug.