Glossaries

Glossary Features and Displays

You can create both individual glossary terms or a full glossary list for your book.

Glossary terms are underlined in your Pressbooks webbook, and display the term definition in a tooltip when clicked.

This screen shows the glossary term bolded . When this is clicked it activates a popup tool tip with the definition

Users can click the term again or press the esc (escape) key on their keyboard to close the tooltip. The tooltip will also close if the user clicks another glossary term on the page.

The glossary list displays in all supported formats: webbook, PDF, digital PDF, EPUB, and MOBI. The glossary list is a consolidated, alphabetized list of all glossary terms which have been selected to show in the glossary list. The design of the glossary list is dependent on the theme and the book format. Glossary definitions can also be styled with links, bold, or italics with the Glossary Term visual editor toolbar. These styles will display in both the glossary list and the tooltip.

This is an example of a glossary in the back matter of the book

NOTE: To add bold formatting to a glossary term, you must format the entire shortcode and not just the term itself in order for the tooltip function to work.

Create a Glossary Term

There are two methods to creating a glossary term. You can either create your terms on the Glossary Terms page before you place them in your book, or you can create the terms directly from inside the content editor of your chapter, front matter, or back matter.

From the Content Editor

To create a term:

  1. Highlight a word that you want to add a glossary term for, or place your cursor where you want the glossary term you have not yet entered to appear
  2. Click the glossary option on the Visual Editor toolbar. The Glossary Terms interface will appear
  3. On the Create and Insert Term tab, enter your term (NOTE: If you’ve highlighted a word, that word will automatically populate the Term field)
  4. Add the description for the term
  5. Click Insert

This shows the location of the glossary terms tool on the top bar and the open dialog box to create the term and its definition

A shortcode will be inserted for your glossary term. If you’ve highlighted an existing term to give it a definition, the shortcode will wrap around the term. If you’ve created a new word while adding the glossary term, that word will appear wrapped in the glossary term shortcode.

This shows the shortcode coding within the visual editor for a new glossary code

The shortcode is visible in the visual editor, but is displayed as a functional tooltip in your webbook.

NOTE: Glossary terms inserted with this method will show in glossary lists by default.

From the Glossary Terms page

To create a term:

  1. Hover over Organize in the left sidebar menu of Pressbooks
  2. Click Glossary Terms 
  3. Click Add New

This screenshot shows the location of the glossy terms menu with terms in the list. It also shows the add new button

  1. Enter a title for your term
  2. Create a definition for the term
  3. Determine whether or not the term should “Show in Glossary List
  4. Click Create
The is the new glossary term screen. In the status and availability box on the right, the checkbox for including the glossary in the glossary list

After the term has been created, it can be placed in the content editor. Follow these steps:

  1. Highlight the word you are applying the existing glossary term,or place your cursor where you want the term to appear
  2. Click Glossary term icon  on the Visual Editor toolbar to open the Glossary Terms interface
  3. Select the Choose Existing Term tab
    Shows the Glossary terms box with the tab "choose existing terms" selected showing a drop down list of the glossary terms
  4. Select the term from the dropdown menu (NOTE: If the text you’ve highlighted matches the name of an already existing term, the interface will automatically open to the Choose Existing Term tab with the matching term selected)
  5. Click Insert
NOTE: Unlisted terms, or those not selected to “Show in Glossary List” are still available as glossary terms in the “Choose Existing Term” list.

Removing a glossary term

To remove a term from the glossary:

1. Go to Organize > Glossary Terms
2. Select the term to access the “Edit Glossary Term” page
3. In the “Status & Visibility” menu, select Move to Trash
4. Save your changes

Remove a term from the glossary list

To remove the term from the full glossary list:

1. Go to Organize > Glossary Terms
2. Select the term to access the “Edit Glossary Term” page
3. In the “Status & Visibility” menu, deselect “Show in Glossary Lists
4. Save your changes

 

The Glossary Terms screen with the location of the remove from list in the right most box

Create a Glossary List

A Glossary List will contain all listed glossary terms you’ve created for your book. By default, all terms will be listed. You can choose whether or not a term is listed when creating a new glossary term through the Glossary Terms page, or when editing any existing glossary term. To exclude a glossary term in your glossary list, uncheck Show in Glossary List in the Status & Visibility menu on the glossary term editor page, then save your changes. To include a term in the glossary list, leave this box checked.

You can see a list of all terms and their listed or unlisted status by going to Organize > Glossary Terms from the left sidebar menu of your Pressbooks dashboard.

To generate the glossary list, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Organize
  2. Add a Back Matter chapter to your book
  3. In the Back Matter Type menu, select Glossary

This is the add new back matter screen showing the "type" dropdown opened and glossary highlighted

  1. You should see the following message appear at the top of your screen: “To display a list of glossary terms, leave this back matter’s content blank.”
  2. Click Create 
 NOTE: You must leave the glossary back matter content blank in order for the glossary to be generated.

The glossary list will be generated and displayed in your webbook and all supported export formats.

Glossary Types

On the “Edit Glossary Term” menu, you’ll notice a menu named “Glossary Type.

Pressbooks does not support different Glossary Types at this time, and we recommend leaving this menu set to “No glossary type” or miscellaneous.  However, this functionality may be expanded in future versions of the Glossary tool.

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University of Arkansas OER Style Guide Copyright © 2023 by Lora Lennertz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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