About physical entities

• A physical entity may be natural or manufactured, discrete or aggregate, and movable or fixed.
• A physical entity may be referred to by one or more names or terms, but the entity exists independently of those designations.
• Physical entities may have attributes such as composition, form, dimensions, and function.
• Physical entities may participate in part–whole, containment, or functional relationships with other physical entities.

Distinction or terms from related entities

• Physical entity vs concept: a physical entity is a material thing; a concept is an abstract unit of knowledge.
• Physical entity vs term: a physical entity exists in the physical world; a term is a linguistic designation.
• Physical entity vs event: a physical entity endures through time; an event occurs in time.

Physical entity metadata

1. Entity type (e.g., animal, mineral, chemical)
2. Domain or discipline this entity belongs to (e.g., biology, chemistry, zoology)
3. Entity name: the text that provides the name for this entity
4. Name type (e.g., technical, legal, nickname)
5. Description: a description of this entity or thing; a short overview or data about its composition
6. Language: designate which language this concept has been added using (e.g., English)
7. Note: add any other information that is relevant (e.g., a guidance note on the use of this concept)

Context

1. Audience: who is the intended audience for this term (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 (e.g., humanities)
4. Sector (i.e., business sector; e.g., marketing)
5. Jurisdiction (i.e., country)
6. Language: designate which language this term has been added using (e.g., English-American)

Relationships

1. Relationships with specific records (e.g., concepts, terms, or organization names):
   • Select the relationships type and use a shortcut key to tag another term to link them together
     • For example, a new variety of a phone, car, or other versioned product
     • For example, a colloquial name for an animal
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 of 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 the 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 concept
   • 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 names 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 an abbreviation has been added in multiple places and needs updating, you can do so by editing the record and it will automatically update all instances

See also

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