### Annotations in dictionary format {#dict-input}
To create [`Example`](/api/example) objects, you can create a dictionary of the
gold-standard annotations `gold_dict`, and then call
```python
example = Example.from_dict(doc, gold_dict)
```
There are currently two formats supported for this dictionary of annotations:
one with a simple, flat structure of keywords, and one with a more hierarchical
structure.
#### Flat structure {#dict-flat}
Here is the full overview of potential entries in a flat dictionary of
annotations. You need to only specify those keys corresponding to the task you
want to train.
```python
### Flat dictionary
{
"text": string, # Raw text.
"words": List[string], # List of gold tokens.
"lemmas": List[string], # List of lemmas.
"spaces": List[bool], # List of boolean values indicating whether the corresponding tokens is followed by a space or not.
"tags": List[string], # List of fine-grained [POS tags](/usage/linguistic-features#pos-tagging).
"pos": List[string], # List of coarse-grained [POS tags](/usage/linguistic-features#pos-tagging).
"morphs": List[string], # List of [morphological features](/usage/linguistic-features#rule-based-morphology).
"sent_starts": List[bool], # List of boolean values indicating whether each token is the first of a sentence or not.
"deps": List[string], # List of string values indicating the [dependency relation](/usage/linguistic-features#dependency-parse) of a token to its head.
"heads": List[int], # List of integer values indicating the dependency head of each token, referring to the absolute index of each token in the text.
"entities": List[string], # Option 1: List of [BILUO tags](#biluo) per token of the format `"{action}-{label}"`, or `None` for unannotated tokens.
"entities": List[(int, int, string)], # Option 2: List of `"(start, end, label)"` tuples defining all entities in.
"cats": Dict[str, float], # Dictionary of `label:value` pairs indicating how relevant a certain [category](/api/textcategorizer) is for the text.
"links": Dict[(int, int), Dict], # Dictionary of `offset:dict` pairs defining [named entity links](/usage/linguistic-features#entity-linking). The charachter offsets are linked to a dictionary of relevant knowledge base IDs.
}
```
There are a few caveats to take into account:
- Multiple formats are possible for the "entities" entry, but you have to pick
one.
- Any values for sentence starts will be ignored if there are annotations for
dependency relations.
- If the dictionary contains values for "text" and "words", but not "spaces",
the latter are inferred automatically. If "words" is not provided either, the
values are inferred from the `doc` argument.
##### Examples
```python
# Training data for a part-of-speech tagger
doc = Doc(vocab, words=["I", "like", "stuff"])
example = Example.from_dict(doc, {"tags": ["NOUN", "VERB", "NOUN"]})
# Training data for an entity recognizer (option 1)
example = Example.from_dict(doc, {"entities": biluo_tags})
# Training data for an entity recognizer (option 2)
doc = nlp("Laura flew to Silicon Valley.")
entity_tuples = [
(0, 5, "PERSON"),
(14, 28, "LOC"),
]
example = Example.from_dict(doc, {"entities": entity_tuples})
# Training data for text categorization
doc = nlp("I'm pretty happy about that!")
example = Example.from_dict(doc, {"cats": {"POSITIVE": 1.0, "NEGATIVE": 0.0}})
# Training data for an Entity Linking component
doc = nlp("Russ Cochran his reprints include EC Comics.")
example = Example.from_dict(doc, {"links": {(0, 12): {"Q7381115": 1.0, "Q2146908": 0.0}}})
```
#### Hierachical structure {#dict-hierarch}
Internally, a more hierarchical dictionary structure is used to store
gold-standard annotations. Its format is similar to the structure described in
the previous section, but there are two main sections `token_annotation` and
`doc_annotation`, and the keys for token annotations should be uppercase
[`Token` attributes](/api/token#attributes) such as "ORTH" and "TAG".
```python
### Hierarchical dictionary
{
"text": string, # Raw text.
"token_annotation": {
"ORTH": List[string], # List of gold tokens.
"LEMMA": List[string], # List of lemmas.
"SPACY": List[bool], # List of boolean values indicating whether the corresponding tokens is followed by a space or not.
"TAG": List[string], # List of fine-grained [POS tags](/usage/linguistic-features#pos-tagging).
"POS": List[string], # List of coarse-grained [POS tags](/usage/linguistic-features#pos-tagging).
"MORPH": List[string], # List of [morphological features](/usage/linguistic-features#rule-based-morphology).
"SENT_START": List[bool], # List of boolean values indicating whether each token is the first of a sentence or not.
"DEP": List[string], # List of string values indicating the [dependency relation](/usage/linguistic-features#dependency-parse) of a token to its head.
"HEAD": List[int], # List of integer values indicating the dependency head of each token, referring to the absolute index of each token in the text.
},
"doc_annotation": {
"entities": List[(int, int, string)], # List of [BILUO tags](#biluo) per token of the format `"{action}-{label}"`, or `None` for unannotated tokens.
"cats": Dict[str, float], # Dictionary of `label:value` pairs indicating how relevant a certain [category](/api/textcategorizer) is for the text.
"links": Dict[(int, int), Dict], # Dictionary of `offset:dict` pairs defining [named entity links](/usage/linguistic-features#entity-linking). The charachter offsets are linked to a dictionary of relevant knowledge base IDs.
}
}
```
There are a few caveats to take into account:
- Any values for sentence starts will be ignored if there are annotations for
dependency relations.
- If the dictionary contains values for "text" and "ORTH", but not "SPACY", the
latter are inferred automatically. If "ORTH" is not provided either, the
<!-- TODO: once we know how we want to implement "starter config" workflow or outputting a full default config for the user, update this section with the command -->
