Building a Glossary for Unfamiliar Document Types
Launch library · evergreen read
Every specialised field of record keeping develops its own vocabulary, and encountering an unfamiliar document type for the first time can slow research considerably until the basic terminology and structure become genuinely familiar to the researcher working through the material, since specialised abbreviations, formats and stock phrases rarely explain themselves to an outsider encountering them for the first time.
Building a personal glossary as unfamiliar terms and document types are encountered, rather than looking each one up repeatedly from scratch, saves real time across a longer project and gradually builds a working fluency that makes later, similar documents far easier to read and use with confidence.
Sharing this kind of glossary, or at least drawing on ones built by other researchers working in the same field, also protects against the kind of small misunderstanding that can quietly compound into a genuinely larger error later in a finished, published piece of writing.