# Changing Rhythm, Stress, and Intonation

DECtalk Software uses stress and syntactic symbols to control aspects of rhythm, stress, and intonation patterns within a spoken text file. These symbols include punctuation marks such as commas, periods, and parentheses. Punctuation marks are recognized by DECtalk Software as indicating special phrasing requirements.

The following reference tables list these symbols:

Stress Symbols

Syntactic Symbols