About terms

• A term is language-dependent and may be specific to a particular domain, language, script, or jurisdiction.
• Multiple terms may designate the same concept (e.g. preferred terms, admitted terms, synonyms, abbreviations).
• A term may include orthographic, grammatical, or morphological variants.
• A term may be subject to usage constraints, including domain, context (register), jurisdiction, or audience.

Insert reusable terms into writing

Distinguishing terms from related entities

• Term vs concept: a term is the linguistic label; a concept is the unit of knowledge being labelled.
• Term vs name: a term denotes a general concept; a name denotes an individual entity (e.g., a person, organisation, place).
• Term vs string: a term has semantic intent and controlled usage; a string is an uninterpreted sequence of characters.

Term metadata

1. Term text (the actual name of the concept)
2. Script: could be derived from a latin word or is a symbol
3. Description of term (not it's definition; a short overview)
4. Note: add any other information that is relevant (e.g., a guidance note on the use of this term)

Context

1. Audience: who is the intended audience for this definition (e.g., general public, employees, students)
2. Context (also known as register; e.g., academic, scientific, formal informal)
3. Domain or discipline this concept belongs to or is associated with
4. Sector (i.e., business sector)
5. Jurisdiction (i.e., country)
6. Language: designate which language this term has been added using (e.g., English)

Relationships

1. Relationships with specific records (e.g., concepts, other terms):
   • Select the relationships type and use a shortcut key to tag another term to link them together
2. Collections: tags that identify what collection(s) you have used this term in
3. Documents: tags that identify what document(s) you have used this term in

Authority, Status, & Source

1. Authority refers to an organization or group that provided evidence for the use of this term (e.g., judicial, government, published)
   • Authority type: select the type of entity that provided authority for this term to exist
   • Add the description of the authority or use the shortcut key to select an existing person or oganization from your terminology data
2. Role: Select how you intend to use this concept:
   • Preferred: primarily the one to use
   • Admitted: a variety of this same terms
   • Deprecated: this concept is no long er in use
3. Status: Identify the status of adding this term
   • Draft: needs more info
   • Under review: by another person
   • Approved for use but not yet published
   • Published and available
   • There is a wide variety of status stages (see also 'Terminology workflow')
4. Source refers to the external documentary evidence you used for compiling this record
   • The title of the reference work that contains this evidence (the work should be in your reference library)
   • Use the backslash key and enter the title to link the reference record
   • Pinpoint the exact pages of the work from which this term is derived
   • Open the library record for this source by clicking the library icon
   • Add a new reference record to your library by clicking the + icon

Adding a list into a document

1. A smart list will produce a list of all terms found in your document across all sections
2. See Style Guide / Terminology for editing the format of smart lists

Tips

• Create different collections for easy maintenance, exporting, or sharing
• We do not produce a list of work items, quotes, paraphrase, text blocks or websites as these are generally not required when writing documents.
• You can export any collection in full directly from the collection record
• If a term has been added in multiple places and needs updating, you can do so by editing the record and it will automatically update all instances
  • Names: change a character name in a book you are writing
  • Places: Change the way you refer to a place
  • Fix any typo across all sections

See also

• Adding a collection of terms
• Exporting a collection of terms
• Annotations / Add terms
• Style Guide / Terminology smart lists