Audio tags are short directions in square brackets that tell the voice how to deliver a line. Here’s how they look in ElevenLabs.
Where tags go
The Text to Speech box even hints at it: type your text with audio tags, like laughs in square brackets, to turn it into expressive speech.
The example scripts
Below the text box, the get started examples show tags in action. Hover over Direct a predicament and you’ll see lines marked confused, laughing, exasperated, uncertain and disbelief, each one placed just before the words it should color.
Building tension with tags
Narrate a mystery shows a narration style: dark narrator voice, building tension, soft, dismissive, focused, and finally whisper. Notice the tags change line by line, the way a narrator would.
Tips
A good approach is to start with no tags, listen, and only add one where a line falls flat. Too many tags in a row can make a read feel overacted.
Hear the voices yourself
Every voice on AI Voice Picks reads the same script, so you can compare them directly. Ready to try it? Start with ElevenLabs (affiliate link).