Siri: Speech “To The Power Of” *HELP ME*

Ok, I have an update. So, after working with support, the work around we came across was to have a single space between then em dash and the text on both sides. Although visually it's a bit wonky, it isn't so bad as to be overly distracting. If you're working with large documents like me, all I did was do a mass replace for all em dashes which made the process quite easy. If you're going to print or make your writing public, you can always go back and mass remove the spaces just before publishing.

Hope this helps!

I copied a very helpful answer, kudos to this person.....

Mookada

Nov 16, 2019 4:19 PM in response to iPadDust

I was able to get some relief from “to the power of” by going to accessibility settings > spoken content > pronunciations > “+” paste one of offending em-dashes and putting a single space in the say field. Also good for other annoying pronunciation errors.

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If it were only the dashes, or double-dashes, I think I could live with it, but seriously, it’s “...” (dot. Dot. Dot.) that does it, too. The fact that it’s only just begun happening on all our devices around the same time? This feels less like a glitch and more like a time bomb that finally hit zero. A really, really annoying and frustrating bomb.

Apple Speech (and Apple in general), you have finally failed us.

While this initial post may now say ‘solved’, this inconvenience, overall, is still very present... to the power of 12.4.1

(And I did try updating. Didn’t help.)

I feel you. And I when I spoke to the tech, I mentioned this post, explaining that I'm not the only one. All 3 techs I talked to were baffled by this and hadn't heard it before. All of them said that they can't fix this if no one calls in and report it, so maybe give them a ring and let them know that this is for everybody. Seems strange--someone should be moderating these forums, but whatever. I'm an Android user typically, so I'm already getting better service here than on the Android side, anyway.

Also, it should be noted that I personally have had trouble with voice-over/siri pronunciation across 2 generations of iPad and with every software update to since 8 (I think), so I typically think long and hard before updating because of this.

I generally wait about two weeks before updating, just to see how many other Apple (iPhone and iPad) users are having serious issues. I only updated early this time because of this odd ‘to the power of’ issue and sadly, it didn’t help at all. I did find one other user who swore updating his iPhone to 13 fixed it, but my iPad Pro is only updates to 12.4.1 so far, so I’m out of luck on that score. I think I will actually give them a ring, if only because with my terrible eyesight, I literally have my iPad read web pages to me. Now it’s like waiting for someone to scrape nails down a chalkboard with every sentence, because you never know when it’ll pop up. But considering the timing of this issue with so many users, I really don’t think it’s an update issue. I’ll nag Apple too and see what they come up with.

UPDATE:

And lo and behold, the problem fixed itself, happily enough... (and my ipad is reading that as “...”) not because I griped at Apple, but when my ipad finally received a notification for the 13.1 update. I didn’t even need to actually update it— only be notified that there’s one available.

*Scratches head*

*Shrugs.*

Yeah, I don’t even know. But thanks, Apple!

: D

Same. But, the newest update did help Rectify some of the issues. I did come across the part where it said ellipsis? I haven't had the chance to sit down and dig further. But at least it did fix the issues with the EM dashes. Hope this helps. However, this newest update did lose some of my files, so there's that.

well it seems it spreading. I have been using this speak text feature for years and now whether web/ or text I get "to the power of" when Siri is reading text. I hope with enough comments Apple fixes this glitch.

I still have this problem after going to iOS 13.1.2. It started around 12.3 or 12.4, across all devices, across multiple apps, and it is truly maddening.

I am using Tom (enhanced).

it seems like it is a font mapping issue, somehow some individual (non-phonetic) characters in text being mapped to the wrong words in speech, like they updated the text to speech table but screwed up some of the special characters along the way.

This is affecting me as well but also on ... and on right " marks in my kindle app. Oddly i was able to get it to stop only by changing the voice from Ava (enhanced) or Siri male (US) which where my previous preferred voices, to Siri male (UK). I have no idea why this worked but it seems like a band-aid fix to me, not a fix of the root cause.

Mine is very touchy ... I have to be close to the top but not too high up. Sometimes I get it on the 1st swipe let her times it take me up to 5 tries.

I was figuring it was the switch from iPhone 6s to the Xs.

Just when Siri was starting to become useful! This is intensely frustrating... having Siri read manuals was a great time saver, but can barely get through a paragraph without multiple repetitions of “to the power of” for every hyphenated word!

I'm so sorry that you all are still having this problem

I updated to the new iOS 13.1.2 and it everything works perfectly. In fact the new update is great and has so many great features

and most of all fixed that issue with Siri.

I hope it does for you!!!!

I have the same issue. It suddenly started to read em dash, — "to the power of" a few months ago.

It is very distracting when "reading" books from for example Books/Kindle.

And unlike the answer from Takamitsukai that solves documents you can edit it does not solve the issue with published material.

So for my sake the issue is not yet solved. So please Apple can you solve this back to a long pause instead of "to the power of"?

Thank you :)

"To the power of" is read by the apple accessibility->spoke content->speak screen every single time an em dash is in any iPhone Kindle app book is read to me by speak screen.

"To the power of" has also been spoken content when quote marks appear in iPhone Kindle app books.

I have an iPhone 8, and "to the power of" started being spoken in September 2019, prior to iOS 13. I am now on iOS 13.1.3 and Speak Screen is still reading em dashes as "to the power of."

I have deleted the iPhone Kindle app and reinstalled it twice, and still "to the power of" occurs with em dashes in the iPhone Kindle app using Speak Screen.

This needs to be fixed, Apple accessibility is not working, nor are any of the text to speech apps according to the long list of complaints in the "solved" but really unsolved Support thread!