diff --git a/packages/text-to-speech/src/htmlToSsml.ts b/packages/text-to-speech/src/htmlToSsml.ts
index c74a463ea..e8e379a8b 100644
--- a/packages/text-to-speech/src/htmlToSsml.ts
+++ b/packages/text-to-speech/src/htmlToSsml.ts
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ import {
   SentenceTokenizerNew,
   WordPunctTokenizer,
 } from 'natural'
+import { isElement } from 'underscore'
 
 // this code needs to be kept in sync with the
 // frontend code in: useReadingProgressAnchor
@@ -49,6 +50,7 @@ const DEFAULT_LANGUAGE = 'en-US'
 const DEFAULT_VOICE = 'en-US-JennyNeural'
 const DEFAULT_SECONDARY_VOICE = 'en-US-GuyNeural'
 const DEFAULT_RATE = '1.1'
+const ELEMENT_INDEX_ATTRIBUTE = 'data-omnivore-anchor-idx'
 
 const ANCHOR_ELEMENTS_BLOCKED_ATTRIBUTES = [
   'omnivore-highlight-id',
@@ -84,6 +86,9 @@ const SKIP_TAGS = [
   'CODE',
 ]
 
+const getAnchorIndex = (element: Element): number =>
+  Number(element.getAttribute(ELEMENT_INDEX_ATTRIBUTE))
+
 function parseDomTree(pageNode: Element) {
   if (!pageNode || pageNode.childNodes.length == 0) {
     console.log('no child nodes found')
@@ -118,7 +123,7 @@ function parseDomTree(pageNode: Element) {
   visitedNodeList.forEach((node, index) => {
     // We start at index 3, because the frontend starts two nodes above us
     // on the #readability-page-1 element that wraps the entire content.
-    node.setAttribute('data-omnivore-anchor-idx', (index + 3).toString())
+    node.setAttribute(ELEMENT_INDEX_ATTRIBUTE, (index + 3).toString())
   })
   return visitedNodeList
 }
@@ -157,7 +162,7 @@ function emitElement(
   isTopLevel: boolean
 ) {
   const topLevelTags = ssmlTagsForTopLevelElement()
-  const idx = element.getAttribute('data-omnivore-anchor-idx')
+  const idx = getAnchorIndex(element)
   let maxVisitedIdx = Number(idx)
 
   if (isTopLevel) {
@@ -166,6 +171,11 @@ function emitElement(
 
   for (const child of Array.from(element.childNodes)) {
     if (SKIP_TAGS.indexOf(child.nodeName) >= 0) {
+      // Skip unwanted tags and update the index
+      if (isElement(child)) {
+        const childIdx = getAnchorIndex(child)
+        maxVisitedIdx = Math.max(maxVisitedIdx, childIdx)
+      }
       continue
     }
 
@@ -180,8 +190,8 @@ function emitElement(
       }
       emitTextNode(textItems, cleanedText, child)
     }
-    if (child.nodeType == 1 /* Node.ELEMENT_NODE */) {
-      maxVisitedIdx = emitElement(textItems, child as HTMLElement, false)
+    if (isElement(child)) {
+      maxVisitedIdx = emitElement(textItems, child, false)
       if (child.nodeName === 'LI') {
         // add a new line after each list item
         emit(textItems, '\n')
@@ -265,6 +275,11 @@ export const stripEmojis = (text: string): string => {
   return text.replace(emojiRegex, '').replace(/\s+/g, ' ')
 }
 
+const filterUtterances = (utterances: Utterance[]): Utterance[] => {
+  const punctuationOrSpaceOnly = /^[\s.,;:!?]+$/
+  return utterances.filter((u) => !punctuationOrSpaceOnly.test(u.text))
+}
+
 const textToUtterances = ({
   wordTokenizer,
   idx,
@@ -309,7 +324,10 @@ const textToUtterances = ({
     const sentenceTokenizer = new SentenceTokenizerNew()
     sentences = sentenceTokenizer.tokenize(text)
   } catch (err) {
-    console.debug('Unable to tokenize sentences')
+    console.log(
+      'Unable to tokenize sentences, falling back to old tokenizer',
+      text
+    )
     // fallback to old sentence tokenizer
     const sentenceTokenizer = new SentenceTokenizer()
     sentences = sentenceTokenizer.tokenize(text)
@@ -371,15 +389,13 @@ const replaceSmartQuotes = (text: string): string => {
 
 // get the max idx of the element and its children
 const getMaxVisitedIdx = (element: Element): number => {
-  let maxVisitedIdx = Number(element.getAttribute('data-omnivore-anchor-idx'))
+  let maxVisitedIdx = getAnchorIndex(element)
   for (const child of Array.from(element.childNodes)) {
-    if (child.nodeType === 1) {
-      maxVisitedIdx = Math.max(
-        maxVisitedIdx,
-        getMaxVisitedIdx(child as Element)
-      )
+    if (isElement(child)) {
+      maxVisitedIdx = Math.max(maxVisitedIdx, getMaxVisitedIdx(child))
     }
   }
+
   return maxVisitedIdx
 }
 
@@ -461,10 +477,12 @@ export const htmlToSpeechFile = (htmlInput: HtmlInput): SpeechFile => {
     }
   }
 
+  const filteredUtterances = filterUtterances(utterances)
+
   return {
     wordCount: wordOffset,
     language,
     defaultVoice,
-    utterances,
+    utterances: filteredUtterances,
   }
 }