PraatTextGrid

PraatTextGrid is the annotation format used by the Praat software for time-aligned labeling of audio. A Praat TextGrid records one or more tiers of annotations that share the same temporal frame, allowing researchers to mark segments, events, and categories in speech data.

TextGrid files are plain ASCII text saved with a .TextGrid extension. A file begins with lines such as "Object class = TextGrid", followed by global time bounds (xmin and xmax) and a listing of tiers. The header includes size = N, where N is the number of tiers. Each tier is defined as an item with a class of IntervalTier or TextTier, a name, and a data block. An IntervalTier contains intervals; each interval has a start time (xmin), an end time (xmax), and a text label. A TextTier contains points; each point has a time and a mark label.

IntervalTier is used for duration-based annotations such as phoneme segments or words, whereas TextTier records punctual events at specific times, such as a vowel onset or a syllable boundary. Time values are typically in seconds and can be exported or imported alongside the corresponding audio signal.

PraatTextGrid is widely used in linguistics, phonetics, and speech processing to organize and share annotations. TextGrids can be created, edited, and saved in Praat, and can be exported to other formats or converted for use in analysis pipelines.

Interoperability and tooling: many programming languages provide libraries to read and write TextGrids (for example, Python libraries for TextGrid parsing, or interfaces to Praat via scripting). However, some tools may have limited support for certain TextGrid features or encoding, so users should verify compatibility when exchanging files.