CSS pause

The CSS pause property is a shorthand property for adding a prosodic boundary (a pause) in speech media.

The pause property is shorthand for the pause-after and pause-before properties. These properties allow you to define a pause before and after a given element when working with speech media.

The pause property accepts two values. The first value provided is for pause-before and the second is for pause-after. If only one value is provide it applies to both properties.

Syntax

Possible Values

pause-before: This value provides the value for pause-before.
pause-after: This value provides the value for pause-after.

In addition, all CSS properties also accept the following CSS-wide keyword values as the sole component of their property value:

initial: Represents the value specified as the property's initial value.
inherit: Represents the computed value of the property on the element's parent.
unset: This value acts as either inherit or initial, depending on whether the property is inherited or not. In other words, it sets all properties to their parent value if they are inheritable or to their initial value if not inheritable.

General Information

Initial Value: Depends on the value of the individual properties (i.e. pause-after and pause-before). Their initial value is none.
Applies To: All elements.
Inherited?: No
Media: Speech

Example Code

Official Specifications

CSS Speech Module (W3C Candidate Recommendation 20 March 2012)
CSS2.1 (W3C Recommendation 07 June 2011)

"Pause" vs "Rest"

CSS3 includes "pause" properties and "rest" properties. Pauses are defined with the pause, pause-after, and pause-before properties. Rests are defined with rest, rest-after, and rest-before.

These "pause" and "rest" properties work in a similar way, however, they differ in where they're inserted.

The "pause" properties are placed outside of any cues that have been specified (i.e. using the cue, cue-before, or cue-after properties). So for example, any "pause before" is inserted between the preceding content and any "cue before". Likewise, any "pause after" is inserted between any "cue after" and the content that follows.

The "rest" properties are placed inside any cues. Therefore, a "rest before" will be inserted between any "cue before" and its subsequent content (and vice-versa for any "rest after").

CSS2

Note that in CSS2, the "pause" properties were placed inside any cues (like the CSS3 "rest" properties), however, this was changed in CSS3 to the placement mentioned above.