Creating a glossary

Scrivener
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What I suggest doing is creating a new item for each glossary entry. You might wish to use the Compile As-Is option for these items, as that will disable any automatic titling you set up in compiler.

For workflow:

  1. Create a “Glossary” folder in the draft. Maybe give it a nice icon and add it to your favourites list for easy access
  2. When you come across a word that you wish to define, there are two routes you can take depending on how in the “zone” you are:
    • If you are flying along and just want to make a note of the fact that you need to define a word, simply select it and right-click on the word, choosing Append Selection to Document ▸ New.... Set the Destination to your glossary folder and just leave the name alone. That’s it. The word will get added as a child document to “Glossary” and you can continue typing
    • If you are working at a slower pace and feel like defining it; or if that is what you are specifically doing as an editing process: select the world you wish to define and hit ⌘L. You’ll get something similar to the above dialogue box; choose the Glossary container as the destination. If your navigation preferences are default, it will pop up in a QuickReference window and you can add the definition right then and there. You can also set the behaviour to open the newly linked document in one of the editor splits. Downside (or maybe upside if you like it) is you end up with a Scrivener Link. This may or may not be useful to you; and if you use Scrivener Links as functional parts of your compilation, you may want to stick with Append, as otherwise you’ll need to manually unlink all of these. Or, you may want all of that.
    • Once you do either of these once, the Destination field will stick, so if you are doing a lot of these, adding new words can be as easy as ⌘L + Return.
  3. Now, of course, you have a jumble of words. When you look at the corkboard or outline for it, you’ll be able to quickly see which ones need to defined by their icon. The index card synopsis will indicate which item generated it, which can be handy, and by default if you use the ⌘L method, a back-link will be added to References for that glossary item
  4. At any time, select the Glossary container and invoke the Edit ▸ Sort ▸ Ascending menu command.
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