Question

Is it possible to highlight (or do something to) specific words, or regular expressions?

I’m going for a no-javascript solution here, but it might not be possible.

Answer 1

You will need JavaScript to do this. I recommend using a strong tag rather than span but either will work. This will replace all first words. You can replace the ^\w with whatever is meaningful.

$('a').each(function() {
    var me = $(this);
    me.html( me.text().replace(/(^\w+)/,'<strong>$1</strong>') );
});