It is very important to learn how to make full use of stress marks when writing phonetically. It is hard to overestimate their importance; stress and intonation are every bit as important as getting the vowels and consonants right. The correct use of stress marks can make a sentence sound more natural (less machine-like) and more intelligible, since a lot of meaning is conveyed by stress and intonation.
Both stress and intonation are controlled by stress marks. In Macintalk, a stress mark is a single digit 1-9 placed directly after a vowel phoneme. A digit is only allowed directly after a vowel phoneme code; its appearance anyplace else will generate an error.
Stress is the emphasis and elongation of a vowel sound. The presence of a digit after a vowel phoneme indicates that the vowel is stressed. Stress is a binary quantity - it is either there or it isnΓÇÖt. The value of the stress mark is irrelevant as far as the stress is concerned.
