How to highlight the words I'm learning in an epub file?

[zhliu0124]

I'm an English learner and want to highlight the words I'm learning in the books. I'd like to ask if there is an easy way to do this, for example, making the words bold, italic, or highlighted? I can prepare a word list in a csv file.

Thanks in advance!

[Karellen]

You want to embed the highlighting in the actual file, instead of annotating in the ereader? Is that correct?

If yes, then you can use the <mark></mark> tags which will highlight the words.

<p>Most of the crew was <mark>baffled</mark> as to how five more teens had simply

[Barbara1955]

Dont do this! I hate to read a book that other people have highlights in!!

[zhliu0124]

Yes, I want to embed the highlights in the file so I can use them in any epub readers.

How could I mark the words in batches, if I have a list of words available? Thank you!

Originally Posted by Karellen

You want to embed the highlighting in the actual file, instead of annotating in the ereader? Is that correct?

If yes, then you can use the <mark></mark> tags which will highlight the words.

<p>Most of the crew was <mark>baffled</mark> as to how five more teens had simply

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by zhliu0124

How could I mark the words in batches, if I have a list of words available? Thank you!

I am assuming you know how to use the Editor.

Using Search and Replace...
Search for baffled
Replace with <mark>baffled</mark>

Just repace "baffled" with whatever your word is.

What happens when you read the book? Do you look up a definition when you come across the highlighted word?

[JSWolf]

<mark> does work in the Calibre editor. But not in Adobe Digital Editions 2.0.1. But what you can do that should work in all cases is this...

mark {
  font-family: sans-serif;
  font-weight: bold;
}

So even if the text is not highlighted, it will be sans-serif and bold so you'll notice it.

[Karellen]

Oops, thanks JSWolf, forgot to mention about the css code.

If you want highlighting instead of bold you could use...

mark {
  background-color: yellow;
}

although on a B&W ereader, it will be a light grey instead of yellow.

[theducks]

You can add a (mark) clip to the </> menu in the Editor

Simply select the word (double click on it for single words, then click the clipname you made

[zhliu0124]

Thank you, guys! This is very helpful!

My other question is how I can modify a bunch of words automatically. It would be tedious to do it one by one.

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by zhliu0124

Thank you, guys! This is very helpful!

My other question is how I can modify a bunch of words automatically. It would be tedious to do it one by one.

You mean a bunch of different words?

I suppose you could use a Regex-function, but I don't know how to do it. Others will need to help out.

How many different words?

[zhliu0124]

Originally Posted by Karellen

You mean a bunch of different words?

I suppose you could use a Regex-function, but I don't know how to do it. Others will need to help out.

How many different words?

Yes, they are different words. Thank you for clarifying it for me.

The word list includes those words I don't familiar with, which is about 30k long. I want those words to be highlighted in the books so I will pay more attention to them while I'm reading the books.

[JSWolf]

You can add <mark></mark> to the every instance of the same word in the that one eBook with a search and replace.

What you cannot do is automate this for all the words you want in all the eBooks you want. This is a manual task for each eBook.

[davidfor]

Of course, if you have a small set of words, you could do a search like:

\b(these|words|are|the|ones|I|want|to|mark|so|that|they|are|noticeable|when|reading)\b

And the replace would be:

<mark>\1</mark>

It is a bit clumsy, but, you can make a fairly long search and save it for reuse. But, you don't want to run that twice on the same book. It will wrap the words in a second set of tags. Remove them first.

And for the record, the book I had opened for editing when I wrote this had 6515 changes when I did the above. I suspect that using "the" was a bad idea

[lomkiri]

You can do that with a regex-function.

Get the regex at https://regex101.com/r/4fWfX1/1 , it selects every word of 2 letters or more (you can increase this limit). Thanks to EbookMakers, he made the regex.

Get the function below, and "replace all".
You'll have to change the file name, and put another tag if you wish
At the end of the job, there is a "debug" msg with the number of tagged words.

BEWARE:
The search in the function is case sensitive. If you want it insensitive, change the line 40.
If you do that (case insensitive), remember that all words in the list must be lowered.

BEWARE: The file used here is not a CVS one
The file is build in this form : a single word by line (one line = one word to mark)
If you want to use a CVS file, show me the format you used, and I'll adjust the function load_file() for you, but only tomorrow night.

def replace(match, number, file_name, metadata, dictionaries, data, functions, *args, **kwargs):
    
    # ============= change this if needed ===============
    fname = '/data/temp/words.txt'    # This is for linux, find by yourself how to give the path in windows
    tag_begin = '<mark>'    # or <span class="marked"> for exemple
    tag_end = '</mark>'
    # See also the test at line 40 if you want a search with case insensitive
    # =================
    
    def load_list(fname):
        data['error'] = False
        data['nb_tagged'] = 0
        try:
            fd = open(fname, 'r')
        except FileNotFoundError:
            print(f"File {fname} not found, or error in opening it")
            # raise		# if we raise the error, the msg above will not be printed
            data['error'] = True
            return []

        # put the file in the dict
        list_word = [line.strip() for line in fd]
        fd.close()
        if not list_word:
            print(f"File {fname} is empty")
            # raise		# if we raise the error, the msg above will not be printed
            data['error'] = True
        return list_word
    
    if not match:	# last passage
        print(f"Number of words tagged: {data['nb_tagged']}")
        return

    if number == 1:	# first passage
        replace.call_after_last_match = True	# ask for last passage after all occ.
        data['words'] = load_list(fname)

    # put this instead if you want insensitive search:
    # if not data['error'] and match[1].lower() in data['words']:
    if not data['error'] and match[1] in data['words']:
        
        data['nb_tagged'] += 1
        return tag_begin + match[1] + tag_end
    return match[1]

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by zhliu0124

I'm an English learner and want to highlight the words I'm learning in the books. I'd like to ask if there is an easy way to do this, for example, making the words bold, italic, or highlighted? I can prepare a word list in a csv file.

Thanks in advance!

FWIW - if you have Word (2007 on) you could convert the book to DOCX and use the Mark feature of Toxaris' eBook Tools MS Word add-in and then convert the DOCX back to EPUB.

The Mark tool provides for multiple lists of 'words' that you could highlight in different colours (e.g. yellow for nouns, pink for verbs, green for adjectives etc). The word lists are stored in XML files, there's a tool to maintain them, or you can edit them in a text editor.

BR