Text

Guide for labeling text data.

When you attach a text data row to a project, the Labelbox will automatically adjust the editor interface for text labeling.

Import text data

To learn how to text data to Labelbox, visit our docs on Importing text data.

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Data row size limit

To view the maximum size allowed for a data row, visit our limits page.

Supported annotation types

Below are all of the annotation types you may include in your ontology when you are labeling text data. Classification-type annotations can be applied at the global level and/or nested within an object-type annotation.

FeatureImport annotationsExport annotations
EntitySee payloadSee payload
RelationshipsSee payloadSee payload
Radio classificationSee payloadSee payload
Checklist classificationSee payloadSee payload
Free-form text classificationSee payloadSee payload

Text entity

Create an entity by clicking the desired starting character and dragging to select a sequence of characters in the unstructured text.

The characters in a text file are not restricted to a single annotation. Therefore, entity annotations can overlap completely or partially.

Full word selection

When labeling text, you can hover over and annotate full words with one click rather than dragging your cursor and labeling character by character. This feature allows for vastly more efficient labeling and decreases the likelihood of labeling errors.

To toggle between Word and Character mode, click on the Settings icon in the text editor and select an option. You can also toggle between approaches using the hotkeys Shift + W for Word mode and Shift + C for Character mode. The default setting for all users is Word mode.

Toggle between **Word** and **Character** modes in the text editor.

Toggle between Word and Character modes in the text editor.

Relationship

With the annotation relationships feature, you can create and define relationships between entity annotations in unstructured text. You can then use these annotation relationships to consolidate labeling workflows and potentially reduce the number of language models needed.

Create an annotation relationship with the following steps:

  1. Create two entity annotations.
  2. Use Option + Click to create a relationship between the entity annotations.
  3. Define the relationship, selecting from the existing tools in your ontology.

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Relationships can be undefined

If desired, a relationship between two annotations can be defined with without a value. This denotes a direct relationship between the annotations without any extra modifiers.

Text-specific hotkeys

FunctionHotkeyDescription
Create a relationshipOption + Click (source) + Click (target)Select an entity to be the source of a relationship, then select another entity to be the target.