Text-to-speech¶
Abbreviations, unusual pronunciations, large digits and ordinals¶
Abbreviations, unusual pronunciation and large digits are common to GTFS text fields. In the example below for TriMEt, we can see how the text-to-speech field should be used:
- Abbreviations are fully spelled out: e.g. “SW” becomes “southwest”; “Ave” becomess “avenue”.
- Pronunciations are spelled in a way that the software reads them correctly: e.g. “Orenco” becomes “orrainkoe”; “Merlo” becomes “murlo”.
- Large digits are spelled out as they would be said: “3300” becomes “thirty-three hundred”. Otherwise, the software would read “3300” as “three thousand three hundred”.
- Ordinals, such as 1st, 2nd and 3rd, should be spelled out: e.g. “1st” becomes “first”.
| stop_id | stop_name | tts_stop_name |
|---|---|---|
| 9163 | SW 125th & Longhorn | southwest one hundred twenty fifth & longhorn |
| 9836 | Orenco MAX Station | orrainkoe max station |
| 9828 | Merlo Rd/SW 158th Ave MAX Station | murlo road southwest one hundred fifty eighth avenue max station |
| 10074 | 3300 Block NW 35th | thirty-three-hundred block northwest thirty fifth |
Acronyms¶
For acronyms that are referred to by their letters, letters should be followed by periods or separated by spaces. This clarifies that the acronym should be read letter-by-letter, and not as a word.
For Tampa, the headsign “North to UATC” contains an acronym that is pronounced by its individual letters. The text-to-speech disambiguation would be:
| trip_headsign | tts_trip_headsign |
|---|---|
| North to UATC | north to u.a.t.c. |
or
| trip_headsign | tts_trip_headsign |
|---|---|
| North to UATC | north to u a t c |
Conversely, some acronyms should be read as words: e.g. NATO; NASA. The text-to-speech field should reflect this.
Note
The field trips.tts_trip_headsign is not yet official in the specification.
Clarifying abbreviations with multiple meanings¶
The “St” abbreviation has multiple meanings: “street”, “saint”, “station” and “1st” to mean “first”. The text-to-speech field can address these double meanings by spelling out the correct word, and doing so in a way that is legible by the TTS software.