Glossary File Structure

Glossaries are text files. If needed, you can modify a glossary with usual text editors provided that you preserve its structure. For simple editing, we recommend that you use the editing functions of the Glossary Viewer.

The overall Glossary structure is shown in the example below:

[Glossary Legal]
 
[Words]
 
a accordance
a acknowledged
c consideration
w written
 
[Phrases]
 
fgav For good and valuable
fgavc For good and valuable consideration
 
sf set forth
sfa set forth above
sfi set forth in
sfip set forth in paragraph
 
[end]

Note the key structural elements:

• The first line [Glossary Legal] is the glossary title.

• The Word section starts with [Words]:

  Glossary Word Entries appear one per line and in alphabetical order in a Word section:

  a	accordance
  a	acknowledged
  c	consideration
  w	written

• The Phrase section starts with [Phrases]:
  

  Glossary Phrase Entries appear one per line in a Phrase section. They appear in Phrase Groups where each two-letter Phrase Group has phrases with the same first two initial letters. Phrase Groups are in alphabetical order with respect to these two letters.

  Here the Phrase section has Phrase Groups for fg and sf in this order as follows:

  fgav	For good and valuable
  fgavc	For good and valuable consideration
  sf	set forth
  sfa	set forth above
  sfi	set forth in
  sfip	set forth in paragraph

  
  Phrases of a given phrase group need not be in alphabetical order.

• The end of the glossary is marked by [end]

When modifying a glossary, it is preferable to keep the alphabetical ordering of entries but this is not required: Instant Text automatically sorts entries when opening a glossary.

New lines in glossary entries

New lines within an expansion are indicated with a paragraph sign ¶ (Alt+0182) as shown in the following example:

apt ¶¶¶Alfred P. Thorn ¶Account Manager¶

Comments

Glossary entries, whether in a Word Section or a Phrase Section, may start with comments enclosed by curly brackets. Comments are usually used for frequency information and other measures of merit. For example:

For entries of a Word section the single number indicated is a frequency.

For entries of a Phrase section, the first number is the frequency, the second is a merit value related to the frequency and to the number of letters. (For a given frequency, the merit of an abbreviation is higher if the number of letters is higher.)

Frequency and merit values are computed when compiling glossaries.