

Hit Shift key 4x on a NYTimes article and see what happens - hammock
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/health/doctor-panels-urge-fewer-routine-tests.html?_r=3&partner=MYWAY&ei=5065#p[MpaBtc]

======
donohoe
_Fork it!_

(oh, and tap _Shift_ key 2 times, not 4)

Take a look at the Source on Github which has been updated from the original I
wrote for the NYT. It also now uses jQuery (NYT was dependent on PrototypeJS)

<https://github.com/NYTimes/Emphasis>

Its a nifty project to contribute to and I welcome updates and discussion.

~~~
emehrkay
That seems like a lot of code to, from a simple guess, shows/hides a
hyperlink.

~~~
brokentone
It enables paragraph based linking and paragraph (or sentence) based
highlighting. With error correction in case the article has changed. Don't
guess, read the release notes
([http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/emphasis-update-
and...](http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/emphasis-update-and-source/)
as noted many times in the comments here).

~~~
emehrkay
My ignorance, I skipped straight to the src after playing with the shift key.
This is some damn cool stuff after reading the link.

------
abrowne
You only need to press shift twice; the pilcrows that appear are paragraph-
specific anchor links. They explain the system a bit at
[http://firstlook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/a-few-new-
feat...](http://firstlook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/a-few-new-features/)

~~~
cynwoody
A new word for the day: pilcrow. I never knew those ¶ thingies had a name
other than "paragraph mark". Thanks.

~~~
Joeri
You may also find its history interesting then:
<http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/2011/02/the-pilcrow-part-1/>

~~~
dhughes
This was the most interesting comment here, more than the main post itself.

------
oasisbob
Previous discussion on Emphasis: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2093820>

The NYTimes open sourced it:
[http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/emphasis-update-
and...](http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/emphasis-update-and-
source/#h\[WtEIyw,2\]) <https://github.com/NYTimes/Emphasis>

------
jerrya
That's nice in how it allows you to link to individual paragraphs:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/health/doctor-panels-
urge-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/health/doctor-panels-urge-fewer-
routine-tests.html?_r=3&partner=MYWAY&ei=5065#p\[MpaBtc\])

~~~
donohoe
You can also highlight sentences across all the text too

------
dsteinweg
It looks like it's pulling characters from the paragraph to generate the
"unique" paragraph ID. ID = First letter from the first 3 words in the first
sentence in the paragraph + First letter from the first 3 words in the last
sentence in the paragraph.

I wonder... for all the different articles on NYTimes, and the different
configurations of words across paragraphs, is this unique enough such that you
won't get duplicate paragraph IDs in any given article?

~~~
celoyd
Especially because it works in exactly the way you specify even when there’s
only one sentence in a paragraph. So the paragraph:

 _That was too much for the water district’s attorney._

And:

 _They were torn apart by angry ducks._

Will both hash to “TwtTwt”. One-sentence paragraphs are probably deprecated in
the NYT’s style guide anyway, but I imagine it might still come up.

~~~
donohoe
One sentence paragraphs still happen but it still works :)

------
mthwl
These are called WinerLinks, as in Dave Winer from over at scripting.com. The
Times started doing this in 2010, here are his thoughts:
[http://scripting.com/stories/2010/11/29/theNyTimesLeadsAgain...](http://scripting.com/stories/2010/11/29/theNyTimesLeadsAgain.html)

More info here:
[http://scripting.com/stories/2010/11/30/winerlinksAndOutline...](http://scripting.com/stories/2010/11/30/winerlinksAndOutliners.html)

Note, that on his blog, he uses a simple, tiny # character after each
paragraph to allow direct linking. No shift key required.

~~~
huhtenberg
> _tiny # character_

... which is _really_ annoying.

(edit) What I don't understand why he wouldn't show these # on hover over a
respective paragraph.

~~~
seldo
Seriously. It's honestly one of the primary reasons I can't stand reading his
stuff; each little hashmark is a reminder that the writer thinks his thoughts
are so important you will want to quote them by chapter and verse, like a holy
text.

~~~
Tipzntrix
Or an easy way to reference readers of your own material to any quotes you may
use from him. This makes it a lot less time-consuming to link to his articles.
Does this actually bring him more traffic? I don't know, but it's interesting
to know that it's actually hurting his traffic from what you're saying.

Personally, I'd be more inclined to link to his article in my own because it's
that much easier.

------
mlntn
I tapped Shift 6 times and a nickel spit out of my USB drive. Amazing!

------
prodigal_erik
Whoever wired this up forgot that "p[MpaBtc]" needs to actually appear in the
name of an anchor for the URL to reliably point to that paragraph. Clever idea
but bad authoring that just fails without javascript.

------
RandallBrown
Nothing happens in IE. Not that anyone here cares...

~~~
cynwoody
Nothing happens in Chrome 18 on Mac, either.

Works in Firefox 11, however. Also works in Safari 4 (an old version).

~~~
arkitaip
Nothing in Opera 11.62

~~~
stalled
Works for me (newly installed Opera 11.62 Build 1347 on Windows 7).

------
zacharydanger
Shows up when you double-tap the shift key.

------
pbhjpbhj
Will be interesting to know what the submitter makes from their affiliate link
appearing in the submission.

------
verisimilitude
I just noticed this when I tried invoke Instant Send[0] with a modifier tap[1]
in LaunchBar. A bit annoying that it blocks the LaunchBar functionality.

[0]:
[http://www.obdev.at/resources/launchbar/help/InstantSend.htm...](http://www.obdev.at/resources/launchbar/help/InstantSend.html)
[1]:
[http://www.obdev.at/resources/launchbar/help/ModifierTaps.ht...](http://www.obdev.at/resources/launchbar/help/ModifierTaps.html)

------
IanDrake
Copy text from this article, past it somewhere and see what happens:

[http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/03/31/1969051/apple-
plans-n...](http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/03/31/1969051/apple-plans-
nations-biggest-private.html#storylink=misearch)

------
Stratego
The fact that people are only now discovering this year old feature goes to
show how lacking its user interface is.

It's a great idea, and a great implementation, but it has no affordance
whatsoever to promote discovery.

------
nhebb
Ooh, I wish Readable would add this. I typically only use Readable for long
articles. When reading part-way through, leaving, and coming back, it's a pain
to locate the paragraph where you left off.

------
Sidnicious
Wait, does the text shuffle around for anyone else when you click on a
sentence?

EDIT: It looks like an odd CSS issue: the first line of each paragraph is
being hidden.

------
crazygringo
I was so confused by this the other day... I didn't know why these paragraph
marks were showing up all over the place.

Nice to finally find out what on earth that was!

------
username3
Sticky Keys?

~~~
mattmanser
It does seem a bizarre key choice, 5 hits of the shift key will prompt the
sticky keys dialog to appear on most of the worlds computers that have a shift
key.

Quite easy to do as a 'tic' when you notice this undiscoverable 'feature'.

------
kmfrk
Thanks for this. I've always known about emphasis.js, but not the keyboard
shortcut.

------
Zhenya
Shows you the paragraph markup?

~~~
donohoe
Nope - it allows you to link to individual Paragraphs as well as Highlighting
sentences (just click them to toggle the Highlight).

As you do this it updates the URL so you can share it.

They Keys to identify the text are generated dynamically and tolerant to
change (so if a Paragraph is modified or moved later on - rare) it will still
link tot he correct one within a given tolerance.

~~~
bmj
Also allows you to look up the definition of a highlighted word.

~~~
donohoe
Thats a separate script and not related to Emphasis

------
kruhft
Nothing. Ubuntu 11.10 + Firefox 10.0.2.

------
jack-r-abbit
ok... now _that_ is pretty nice. I'll be adding that to my tool box. Thanks!

~~~
jack-r-abbit
huh? why the down vote?

~~~
DanBC
I didn't down vote. I guess someone thought your comment was content free. It
is frustrating when you have low karma for people to down vote but not explain
why. Usually they balance out.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
I'm not even sure I know what "content free" means. So complimenting the post
as being nice and stating that I plan to make use of the information in the
future is worthy of a down vote? I wasn't expecting an up vote but I didn't
think anyone would dislike my comment so much to take that 1 sec to click it
down. Whatever.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
awesome... 3 more down votes. At this rate I should be back down to 0 Karma by
morning. If I am doing something wrong here wouldn't it be better to tell me
what it is rather than just down vote in silence?

~~~
mooism2
People interpret it as whining, and feel whining is deserving of downvotes.

It's not a community norm I agree with --- I feel that if you want to know
_what you've done wrong_ and you're not acting all entitled about it (oh, but
some people might interpret your reactions as acting entitled) then someone
should tell you.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
I don't think my "why the down vote" was any type of "entitlement". It was a
just a question. Could easily ahve been answered. and it was. but then it was
also down voted.. which in itself is not helpful at all. The answer given was
some what helpful but I had follow up to it. and that too was down voted..
still with no real helpful answer. So at that point I was more frustrated than
anything. Now I understand.

