Connecting paragraphs for the purpose of tagging

[aarontimo]

Hi there,

I see someone has encountered a similar issue over a year ago (see Group paragraphs or lists into a block) and I just want to see whether anything has changed?

I am increasingly using queries in Obsidian to present everything with a given tag(s) to be summarised in one note.

The only problem is when reviewing literature notes (for example) there may be multiple paragraphs that need to be tagged for the paragraphs to be reproduced in the query. I don’t want the whole note to appear via a query - just a way to select multiple paragraphs and apply a tag without having to manually add the tag to each paragraph.

Is there a way to do this?

I hope this makes sense haha.

[CawlinTeffid]

What kind of query — DataView? Embedded search?

If you were just embedding by hand, you could divide the literature note with headings and embed with a heading link. Does your query method support sections?

[aarontimo]

Hi @CawlinTeffid, thank you for your reply and apologies for not providing this information in the first instance.

This is an example of the type of query I use:

block: #s_596A/history_of_provision 
title: History of the provision s 596A
collapsed: false 
context: true 
hideTitle: false 
renderMarkdown: true

or

block: ([[market accountability]]) OR #market_accountability
title: Market Accountability References
collapsed: false 
context: true 
hideTitle: false 
renderMarkdown: true 

This is achieved with the ‘obsidian query function. but to add useful feature like showing in rendered markdown and controlling some other elements, you can try to use Query Control plugin for that (but u need to install using BRAT)’ (shout out to @efemkay for this awesome workflow! see here for more details Is there a way to dynamically reproduce whole paras featuring a tag or link? - #2 by aarontimo)

I love the query function and Query Control plugin - I just want to reduce the need to add the same tag to each paragraph when 4 or 5 paragraphs all need to be tagged with the same tag. I’m imagining something like the ‘toggle lists’ in the Obsidian menu (where every sentence/paragraph becomes a list) but for grouping (or connecting) all paragraphs that have been selected so that the individual paras appear shaded as one block (see screenshot).

I see this also being useful when embedding a specific block. If there are 4 or 5 blocks in a row that you want to embed, at the moment, one needs to embed each block separately. But, if we could select the blocks and then group them into one block you could then embed the grouped 4/5 paras with the one embed code.

I look forward to hearing if this is currently possible or whether I should submit this as a feature request.

[CawlinTeffid]

You could put some kind of distinct text before and after the group of paragraphs you want to group together (I suggest the thematic break - - -) and then add a regular expression search to your query.

Or “You can kind of cheat it with
at the end of the first line, and then have the second line directly below the first. Not ideal, but a workaround.” — Discord This technically makes them all a single paragraph, tho.

The Quoth plugin doesn’t do what you want but (it allows you to embed multiple paragraphs), but I mention it because it’s related.

Nice to meet another fan of the embedded search feature!

[aarontimo]

Thanks @CawlinTeffid - the distinct text/regex idea is a good one. Not ideal but it certainly is a solid work around. Thanks!

Yes, big fan of the embedded search feature. It’s so useful if you want to reduce friction in updating many notes while processing extracted notes from Zotero.

Thanks again.

[CawlinTeffid]

I should have thought: if you use a comment as the distinct text, it’ll be hidden in reading view/export.

I see all these DataView posts and I’m like, “but embedded searches is right there”. (Of course DataView can do more, but so far search is good enough for me.)