Welcome to our Terminology quick start. Here you'll learn:
In short: Acrolinx needs to know your organization-specific words and how you use them. That way, it can check for them and give you related suggestions in the Acrolinx Sidebar.
To provide the exact guidance your content needs, Acrolinx needs your input. Terminology is where you add the words Acrolinx should look out for. Put simply, terminology is the words and phrases that your company uses. You want these terms to be consistent and correct across all content. In the Dashboard, you organize them and assign them a status to define how they're used.
For Acrolinx, these are terms like "Scorecard," "Targets," and "Content Cube."
We use these words and phrases to describe the features of our product. No matter where you work, your company has words and phrases that it uses to talk about products or processes. These are your terms.
In Terminology, you organize terms based on domains. Domains play a functional role for the Acrolinx check. When Targets is enabled, you can add one or more domains to a Target in the Words and Phrases goal. This way, your writers will get exactly the Terminology guidance they need.
Your terms need some basic settings so Acrolinx knows how suggest them in the Sidebar. Before you add terms, familiarize yourself with the Term Settings.
Before you can add your first term, you'll need to create a domain to store it. You'll create domains in the category manager. There. you'll get an overview of the components of your Terminology section and manage them according to your needs. Category names are displayed in a tree view.
Learn more about the category manager in Create, Edit, and Delete Categories and List Items,
Tip
You can skip this step if your installation already has domains.
To add a domain, create a new list item in the System Categories section of the category manager. Just go to Terminology > Customization > Category Manager to get started.
To create a list item, follow these steps:
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Click the name of the category where you want to add a list item.
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In the shortcut menu that appears, click Add List Item.
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In the dialog, enter the list item name.
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(Optional) Select the Display Name option and enter a display name for the list item.
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Click Ok .
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Click the Reload Dashboard button at the bottom of the page.
Each component of the Dashboard is refreshed including the Terminology Manager. Any new categories, list items, and fields are loaded into the Terminology Manager interface.
Example Domain Structure
You can use domains to categorize terms in various ways. Some people like to organize their domains by interface area or product line. The following example illustrates how you can hierarchically organize the system category "domain" in the category tree view.
Acrolinx lets you create and add terms in a few different ways. It's easiest to add terms manually via the text field in the Terminology section.
To create a term, you'll enter text in the Search or create field. This field is at the top of most pages in the Terminology section. Be sure to search for your term to make sure it doesn't already exist.
To create a new term, follow these steps:
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If the Search or create dropdown isn’t set to Term already, select the option Term from the dropdown.
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Type the name of the new term in the autocomplete field.
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Select Create new term "<term>" in the dropdown that appears.
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Update the basic term settings in the prompt that appears.
Tip
To enter a special character in the term name, enter the Unicode for the character with the prefix "\u."
For example, you would enter a term name with a non-breaking space (Unicode: 00a0) like this: my\u00a0term
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Click Create.
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(Optional) Update any other settings that you consider important in the term edit page.
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Reload your language configurations in the Servers section of the Dashboard to make your new term available to your writers.
Basic Term Settings
The prompt that appears allows you to define the term settings that Acrolinx needs for checking. Here, you set where and when Acrolinx checks for your term.
|
Term name |
Language |
Domain |
Status |
|---|---|---|---|
|
<your term> |
Select the language of the term. |
Select a domain for the term. |
The Status determines which terms to add for checking. Acrolinx always includes terms with the status preferred, admitted, and deprecated in a check. If your term still needs some validation, select proposed. |
The status defines how the Sidebar highlights terminology issues. Admitted terms are always highlighted, but these might not affect the score depending on your configurations. Learn more in Add Term Statuses, Head Terms, or Domains and Words and Phrases.
Linked terms in Acrolinx are terms that are grouped into the same term entry and are thus linked to one another.
This linked relationship plays an important role when you check with Acrolinx. When Acrolinx highlights a deprecated term, it checks to see if the deprecated term is linked to any preferred or admitted terms. If the deprecated term is linked to preferred or admitted terms, Acrolinx suggests those terms as possible replacements.
To create a linked term, follow the steps in Create and Edit Terms and Linked Terms.