Headings and vocabulary entries

1. Three levels#

A heading is one to three # signs, a space, and its text, on a line of its own:

## Nouns### The plural### The ezafe## 7. Verbs

The studio numbers the sections itself, so a number typed in front of a ## heading — 7. or 7) — is taken off, or it would come out twice. A ### heading keeps whatever it says. Both kinds, and the vocabulary entries below, are listed in the reading view’s ☰ Contents, and each is a heading of the PDF.

A few things are not headings here:

• #### and deeper: the line is text, signs and all.
• A heading underlined with === or ---: the words are a paragraph, and the underline is either more of it (===) or a rule, dropped (---).
• # signs at the end of a heading are not taken off: ## Verbs ## reads Verbs ##.
• An ending = *…* on a ## heading is taken off and lost; it means something only on a vocabulary entry, below.

2. Vocabulary entries#

A ## heading whose parts are separated by | and which starts with a word of the target language is a vocabulary entry — the studio calls it a lemma. The word is set large in the target language’s face, and beside it, in a column of their own, its transliteration and where it comes from:

## کتاب | ketāb | from Arabic *kitāb* | = *book*The entry itself follows as ordinary paragraphs and lists.

Its parts, in order:

1. The headword, in the target language.
2. The transliteration — how it is said.
3. The origin, or any short remark: it takes italics, colours and words of the target language like any line of prose.
4. The meaning, as = *…*. It is printed nowhere — the entry below says it — and exists to put the word into the document’s glossary (⇄ Glosses), where the button Lemmas only narrows the list to the words that head an entry.

Only the headword and one more part are needed. A part may be left empty between its bars, and the meaning may be left out:

## آب | āb | = *water*## خانه | | Middle Persian *xānag*

The meaning, two ways#

The meaning may be its own last part, after a bar — there the italics are optional, since the bar says where it starts — or hung off the end of the origin, where the italics are required:

## تند | tond | mp. tund | = *fast, sharp*## تند | tond | mp. tund | = fast, sharp## تند | tond | mp. tund = *fast, sharp*

The first two give the meaning a part of its own, with and without italics; the third hangs it off the origin. The three read the same. Without italics and without the bar, an = in the origin is part of the origin — which is why an etymology may say 'x = y' without losing half of itself to the glossary.

A coloured headword#

The headword may wear a colour — one of the five names or a # and six hexadecimal digits (Colours) — and its transliteration may ride in the same braces, leaving its own part empty:

## [کتاب]{teal} | ketāb | from Arabic *kitāb* | = *book*## [خانه]{#8E2B34 translit:xāne} | | mp. *xānag* | = *house*

A transliteration written in the heading’s own part wins over one in the braces. The braces may also hold {tl} or the language’s own code ({fa}), which colour nothing, or a translit: (and, in Japanese, a kana:) with no colour at all: ## [کتاب]{translit:ketāb} | | …. A colour name the studio does not know leaves the headword black.

You rarely type the colour: select the headword’s letters in Studio’s source editor and use colour (Colours). Its transliteration or reading is written in the heading’s own parts and shown in the entry itself, so a headword does not open an empty cloud merely to offer no action.

What makes a heading an entry#

The studio decides by the first part:

For a language with its own script

— Persian, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Chinese — the first part must start with a character of that script, or be one mark, […]{…}, whose words start with it (## [حرکت آهسته]{teal} | … is an entry). So a heading that starts with the script and holds a | is always an entry; a section title that must hold a | starts with a word of the prose instead.

For a Latin-script target

— Italian, French, German, Turkish, English, Spanish — nothing tells a word of the language from a word of the prose, so any ## heading with two or more parts is an entry. A section title there cannot hold a | at all.

---target: it---## pesca | pèsca | Latin *persica* | = *peach*## [casa]{teal} | càṡa | = *house*

The headword is set exactly as typed, one word or a few: nothing inside it is read as Markdown. A heading whose first part starts with the script and then holds a mark further on (## کتاب و [قلم]{teal} | …) is an entry whose headword shows the brackets as typed; one whose first part is two marks with words between them is not an entry at all, but a numbered section with its marks drawn.

Japanese: the reading comes first#

A language with a reading — Japanese is the one — has one part more: the reading in kana comes second, before the rōmaji. The kana is shown above the rōmaji.

---target: ja---## 日本語 | にほんご | nihongo | 日本 *Japan* + 語 *language* | = *Japanese*## [猫]{teal translit:neko} | ねこ | = *cat*

In Japanese the second part is always the reading: ## 猫 | neko shows neko where the kana goes. To give the rōmaji without the kana, leave the reading empty, ## 猫 | | neko. The braces of the headword may carry the reading too, {kana:ねこ translit:neko}, for the parts left empty.

Chinese has no reading part: the pinyin is its transliteration, second as in Persian.

---target: zh---## 学习 | xuéxí | = *to study, to learn*

On the page and on paper#

In the reading view an entry is a band across the page between a rule above and a thinner one below: the headword on the left, in the target face, as large as the ⚙ panel’s Headword size slider says; on the right the reading in grey, the transliteration in italics in the accent colour, and the origin small and grey under it. Each entry is listed in ☰ Contents with its transliteration. The transliteration and reading are shown in the entry and edited in the heading’s own parts; colour is applied to selected source text in Studio.

In the PDF the headword is set in 38-point type (larger in large print) in a column six tenths as wide as the text, and scaled down if it is wider than that column; the reading, the transliteration in the accent colour, and the origin stand in the narrower column beside it.