Key Terms and Glossary
Key terms are the “means of exchange” in disciplines. You gain entry into the discussion by demonstrating how well you know and understand them.
A glossary is a list of key terms in a book that are listed alphabetically.
There are two different approaches to creating and emphasizing key terms in your book in Pressbooks.
- Use the Glossary feature that allows the key terms to have a hover-over feature.
- Bold the key terms in the content and add a list of the terms and definitions elsewhere in the book.
Approach 1: Glossary Feature (Tooltip Hover)
In Pressbooks, there is an option to add a glossary feature to each word in the content so that a tooltip appears with the definition. For these words, Pressbooks will also compile a list of all words in a glossary in the back matter of the book.
The glossary feature can also be used at the end of a chapter to highlight the keywords that were contained within the chapter.
Approach 2: Traditional Key Term List (no Tooltip hover)
With this approach, you can link the definition to the page it is found on so the students can easily find the description within the text.
Definitions
Discipline-specific language and any language outside the standard vocabulary of a student audience should be defined in context within the sentence or written in more straightforward language. These terms do not receive special typographic treatment unless considered a key term. Authors should use best practices in defining terms. In brief, best practice recommends the following:
- Avoid defining a term with a variation of the term itself. For example, “conflict theory is a theory that states society is in perpetual conflict” → “conflict theory is a sociological framework that explores the tensions that arise from competition for resources.”
- Use nouns to define nouns and verbs to define verbs.
- Provide a three-part definition (the term, the classification of the term, and the definition characteristics of the term).
- For example, “Power: The ability of an individual, group, or institution to influence or exercise control over other people and achieve their goals despite possible opposition or resistance.”
- Use simple and familiar terms.
- For example, “Member: An individual that belongs to a group.”
Using your own words to define your key terms is best, but if you choose to use openly licensed content for a definition, you will need an attribution.
“Defining Key Terms” from Strategies for Conducting Literary Research Copyright © 2021 by Barry Mauer & John Venecek is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
“Definitions” Targeted Pathways Guidelines for Key Terms and Definitions by Chemeketa Press has licensed this resource under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
are the “means of exchange” in disciplines. You gain entry into the discussion by demonstrating how well you know and understand them.
