Why is the text layout like that? Why can’t be just a normal text like in a book without this large spacing - I marked with red arrows what I mean?
1 Like
Is this a text you have imported yourself and is in PDF format by any chance?
1 Like
Nope. This is a text from LingQ-Library.
1 Like
I think it’s because it’s a transcript for a youtube video. It’s the same with all transcripts. But books are just normal way. I don’t know why.
1 Like
You’re correct. When importing subtitles (for example YouTube, Netflix or Whisper transcripts), LingQ places the individual lines of the subtitle in sentences and each sentence in a paragraph. Paragraphs always insert a blank line.
I don’t know why they decided to do that. For content shared in the library you can’t really do anything about it. But for private imports you can avoid subtitle files. When importing ebooks or plain text, LingQ will place all sentences in one paragraph so there won’t be additional blank lines.
2 Likes
I wonder if anyone from LingQ could reply to this. The YouTube videos often make the most interesting lessons but it’s very difficult to get any context when in the middle of a phrase it cuts to a new paragraph (every single line is a practically a new paragraph), so you cannot translate the phrase/idiom properly. I can’t see a way to edit it, nor would I really want to as it’s far too time-consuming, especially as the app breaks every time I edit, and I don’t have a lot of time. I presume it’s to do with the sentence editing by the author in YouTube itself, but my personal opinion is that if you’re going to introduce features you need to make sure they are workable and not just introduce it because it would be a great feature, which it can be.
Importing has to be workable and if it’s not then it shouldn’t upload. For example, detecting when a paragraph has been split in the middle of a sentence to create a new paragraph. The simplest way is by detecting fullstops, exclamation/question marks. Even detecting semi-colons, dashes and hyphens should be included, or rather, the absence of any of these should mean that no paragraph should be created. Never split a word that’s hyphenated and never split a sentence that doesn’t have any of the other punctuation marks mentioned. Honestly, some lessons are really hard to work with because of splitting sentences into paragraphs.
Of course, that doesn’t solve the problem of YouTube users not using punctuation at all, which is an absolute nightmare and, in my opinion, is low-quality content but that’s another matter…
3 Likes
When importing from YT text formatting depends on the subtitles file format uploaded to a video. Our system just grabs it and make a lesson of it. We’ll see what we can do to improve things on our end.
2 Likes
I figured that’s what it’d be, but it’s a huge pain. Any improvement would be appreciated.
3 Likes
to solve this wich is very annoying i use this steps:
1- print lesson
2- paste chatgpt (prompt should be like: do not change any word but separate in coherent phrases each in 1 or 2 lines max)
3-regenerate lesson
4-paste chatgpt layout
5-save lesson
6- in case you loose youtube/text timeline is very easy to solve. Just use youtube to mp3 (i use https://ytmp3s.nu/ wich is free and fast but plenty of them) and add as audio file to the lesson. No need to click generate stamps.
this way in sentence mode you will have both audio only option or video with sound option both sincronized with the text.
if you are learning chinese and encounter mismatching spaces between words or characters joined when it should not i recomend use https://mandarinspot.com/ wich is free and can separate words almost perfect. So copy from chatgpt paste mandarinspot first, then copy from mandarinspot paste to lingq . It works for me fine. Doing this since several months ago. Is true you need an extra effort but well deserve as you will enjoy a smooth lesson listening/reading.
3 Likes
This is very helpful and a great stopgap while it gets sorted 
How do you print the lesson?
1 Like
Ah, this is perfect, thank you. 
2 Likes