Punctuation Formatting | Smallest AI Docs

Real-Time

Punctuation formatting controls whether transcript text is returned with punctuation and capitalization applied, or as raw lowercase text. This is enabled by default.

Enabling Punctuation Formatting

Add the format parameter to your WebSocket connection query parameters. Options: true (default), false.

1 const url = new URL("wss://api.smallest.ai/waves/v1/stt/live?model=pulse");
2 url.searchParams.append("language", "en");
3 url.searchParams.append("encoding", "linear16");
4 url.searchParams.append("sample_rate", "16000");
5 url.searchParams.append("format", "false"); // disable formatting
6 
7 const ws = new WebSocket(url.toString(), {
8   headers: {
9     Authorization: `Bearer ${API_KEY}`,
10   },
11 });

Example Output

With `format=true` (default)

1 {
2   "transcript": "Hello there, how can I help you today?",
3   "is_final": true
4 }

With `format=false`

1 {
2   "transcript": "hello there how can i help you today",
3   "is_final": true
4 }

When to Use

Use case	Recommended setting
Live captions and subtitles	`format=true` - human-readable output
Meeting transcription	`format=true` - properly formatted text
Feeding into LLMs or NLP pipelines	`format=false` - raw text avoids double-formatting
Search indexing	`format=false` - normalized text for consistent matching
Custom post-processing	`format=false` - apply your own punctuation and casing rules

Enabling Punctuation Formatting

Example Output

With format=true (default)

With format=false

When to Use

With `format=true` (default)

With `format=false`