# Why are my conditions shown as codes instead in PsychoPY self paced reading task experiment?

**URL:** <https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/why-are-my-conditions-shown-as-codes-instead-in-psychopy-self-paced-reading-task-experiment/44561>\
**Category:** Online experiments\
**Tags:** psychopy3\
**Created:** [April 12, 2025, 2:21am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/why-are-my-conditions-shown-as-codes-instead-in-psychopy-self-paced-reading-task-experiment/44561 "2025-04-12T02:21:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Cotton3\_Happy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/cotton3_happy/32/44498_2.png) [@Cotton3\_Happy](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/Cotton3_Happy)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2025, 2:21am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/why-are-my-conditions-shown-as-codes-instead-in-psychopy-self-paced-reading-task-experiment/44561/1 "2025-04-12T02:21:58Z")

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**OS** : Win11  
**PsychoPy version** : 2024.2.4 Py 3.8)

**What are you trying to achieve?:**  
Here I tried to modify a demo from this link [demos / self\_paced\_reading · GitLab](https://gitlab.pavlovia.org/demos/self_paced_reading)

**What did you try to make it work?:**

I do have 80 sentences, and I categorized them into 20 files,  
for example here, I modified “spreadsheet” from the original to “spreadsheet1”  
so I edited the excel file accordingly, and it would not show my sentences after that.

Here is what my experiment look like:

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/psychopy/original/3X/3/8/38414745eb2bf0ee1f10264a18993a6ef092a84c.png)

**What specifically went wrong when you tried that?:**  
Everything works; it is just that I cannot see my items in the experiment.  
Each of my items has 7 words, and when I load my experiment, even though I can’t see it, (it shows this

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/uploads/psychopy/original/3X/5/3/53f328ae3d63bd5d119d16d2f203ec2a89b57b65.png) instead), after I press 7 times on the space bar, it moves on to the next part of the experiment.

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**Author:** ![wakecarter](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/wakecarter/32/5753_2.png) [@wakecarter](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/wakecarter)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2025, 6:15am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/why-are-my-conditions-shown-as-codes-instead-in-psychopy-self-paced-reading-task-experiment/44561/2 "2025-04-12T06:15:19Z")

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Your text variable is also being used as the name of a text component.

> [@Wakefield's Daily Tips](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/wakefields-daily-tips/43371/3):
>
> Naming conventions In PsychoPy, the names of components, routines, loops and variables must all be unique. For example, you can’t have a text component called text\_1 and also use text\_1 as the name of the variable that contains the text itself. One way to reduce the chances of accidentally reusing names is to have a naming convention. For example: lower\_case\_with\_underscores for components, routines and loops TitleCase for spreadsheet variables reverseSentenceCase for code variables Use var…

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**Author:** ![Cotton3\_Happy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/cotton3_happy/32/44498_2.png) [@Cotton3\_Happy](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/Cotton3_Happy)\
**Post date:** [April 12, 2025, 10:25pm UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/why-are-my-conditions-shown-as-codes-instead-in-psychopy-self-paced-reading-task-experiment/44561/3 "2025-04-12T22:25:38Z")

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Thank you so much! It worked!

May I also ask if there is any way to modify the text on my spreadsheet and let it show on my experiment as an item? e.g. I add bolding for the first half of the word “ **Ap** ple” on the spreadsheet. How can I let it also show in my experiment?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wakecarter](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.psychopy.org/wakecarter/32/5753_2.png) [@wakecarter](https://discourse.psychopy.org/u/wakecarter)\
**Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 5:25am UTC](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/why-are-my-conditions-shown-as-codes-instead-in-psychopy-self-paced-reading-task-experiment/44561/4 "2025-04-13T05:25:40Z")

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> [@Wakefield's Daily Tips](https://discourse.psychopy.org/t/wakefields-daily-tips/43371/78):
>
> YayText bold and italic text generator If you want to change an individual word in a text component to bold or italics locally then you can use \<b\> \</b\> and \<i\> \</i\>html tags in a textbox component. However, the bold doesn’t work very well. Ironically these don’t work online. There is, however, an alternative to turning your text into an image. [YayText](https://yaytext.com/bold-italic/) is an online tool where you can create bold and italic versions of individual words using unicode. The site also has other options, bu…