Swear-word logatoms must be excluded because taboo words change the talker’s intonation

Evidence

The errors listeners make show how the system being tested damages the speech, such as particular letter confusions, and provides a measure of intelligibility. Typically lists of 50 or 100 logatoms are used as a compromise between accuracy and fatigue, as discussed earlier. Although in theory any consonant-vowel-consonant may be used, it has been the authors’ experience that rude or swear words must be excluded, because the talker usually cannot pronounce them with the same inflection as normal words. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 2401

Categorization

• CANDY: A fun, tellable detail: language engineers have to scrub profanity out of speech tests because people can’t say them flatly.
• SHARE: Perfect tidbit for someone who works in audio or UX testing — narrow enough that only an audio nerd would relish it.