This paper describes a scheme for the rule synthesis of speech in which words spoken in isolation were spliced after they were modified by rule. The input to this scheme consists of a typed text accompanied by phrase boundary information. The words spoken in isolation were recorded and analyzed into parameters from which these words can be synthesized after they have been modified. These modifications consisted of (1) a compression of word duration appropriate for continuous speech: however, the same shortened duration is used in all contexts; (2) minimal changes for amplitude and between‐word coarticulation; and (3) pitch determined by context‐dependent pitch rules. Pitch rules have been developed to deal with complex sentences whose phrase structure is known. The resulting paragraph is played as an example of the quality of synthetic speech.