STRESS

A single quotation mark \'\ indicates primary (strongest) stress or accent; double quotation marks \"\ indicate secondary (medium) stress or accent:

Main Entry: heart.beat
Pronunciation: 'härt-"bEt

The stress mark stands at the beginning of the syllable that receives the stress.

Stress marks are an indication of the relative prominence of the syllables in a word. In running speech the primary stress can vary in English words for several contextual and semantic reasons. Because the variation is so great, this book shows the primary stress of a word in its pronunciation as a single word out of context.

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