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. 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
7. 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')
8. Language: designate which language this concept has been added using (e.g., English)
9. Note: add any other information that is relevant (e.g., a guidance note on the use of this concept)

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 & 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. 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
   • 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