Learn how to add natural pauses to your voice agent's speech using dashes. Control pacing for clearer, more human-sounding conversations.
Sometimes you want your voice agent to slow down — to take a breath between a long greeting and a question, to space out the digits of a phone number, or to pause dramatically before delivering an important piece of information. Dapta voice agents support this directly from your prompt using a simple dash-based syntax.
Inside any text the agent will speak (prompts, greetings, fixed responses), a dash (-) surrounded by spaces is interpreted as a short pause of roughly 0.3 seconds. To make the pause longer, just chain more dashes together — each additional dash adds about 0.3 seconds.
word - word
~0.3 s (short)
word - - word
~0.6 s (medium)
word - - - - word
~1.2 s (long)
The spaces around each dash matter. word-word is read as a hyphenated word; word - word introduces a pause. Always keep one space on each side of every dash.
Short pause for natural phrasing:
Hi, this is Sofia from Dapta - how can I help you today?Longer pause before delivering a key piece of information:
Your confirmation number is - - - 4 - 8 - 2 - 9.Spacing out digits so phone numbers and codes are easy to understand:
You can reach us at 3 - 2 - 1 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 0.Phone numbers, codes, and emails — split into smaller chunks so the listener can follow along. See Improving pronunciation for the full pattern.
Greetings and transitions — a short pause after the agent introduces itself feels more natural than a single run-on sentence.
Emphasis — a longer pause before an important value (price, date, deadline) draws attention to it.
Reading instructions step by step — a pause between steps gives the caller a moment to process.
💡 Tip: Don't overuse pauses. Two or three well-placed dashes per response feel natural — a dash after every clause feels robotic and slow.
💡 Tip: Never write instructions like
[pause],[wait], or(pause for 2 seconds)in your prompt. The agent will read them out loud literally. Use dashes instead.
💡 Tip: If you need a much longer pause (e.g., 3+ seconds), reconsider the script — long silences on a phone call usually feel like the line dropped. Consider phrasing it as a question that invites the caller to respond instead.
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