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Voiced pause

Sound
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A deliberate, audible pause—marked by breath, silence, or vocal emphasis—that shapes rhythm, meaning, or dramatic tension in spoken poetry.

Detailed Definition
A voiced pause is a deliberate silence within a poem—marked by punctuation, line break, or caesura—that carries emotional or rhetorical weight, as if the speaker’s breath or thought is audibly suspended; unlike empty gaps, these pauses are “voiced” through their charged absence.
Example
Example in poetry:
A caesura marked by comma or dash creating a voiced pause: “Stop—listen—to the wind”; “She said, ‘Wait,’ and I did”; “Alone (but not lonely) in the crowd”; “The clock struck—once—twice—and stopped”
Additional Notes
Voiced pause: A deliberate hesitation or break in the delivery of a poem that is not a silence, but is filled with an audible sound like a sigh, groan, or throat-clearing, often used to convey emotion or difficulty in speaking; a rhetorical device.
Also Known As
Pause with voice Spoken caesura Voiced rest Articulated silence Expressed silence
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