Book excerpt: Text-to-Speech Synthesis provides a complete, end-to-end account of the process of generating speech by computer. Giving an in-depth explanation of all aspects of current speech synthesis technology, it assumes no specialised prior knowledge. Introductory chapters on linguistics, phonetics, signal processing and speech signals lay the foundation, with subsequent material explaining how this knowledge is put to use in building practical systems that generate speech. Including coverage of the very latest techniques such as unit selection, hidden Markov model synthesis, and statistical text analysis, explanations of the more traditional techniques such as format synthesis and synthesis by rule are also provided. Weaving together the various strands of this multidisciplinary field, the book is designed for graduate students in electrical engineering, computer science, and linguistics. It is also an ideal reference for practitioners in the fields of human communication interaction and telephony.