Authors Tools Blog

Do you remember your first writer’s meeting or conference? Did it seem that everyone around you was speaking a foreign language? Perhaps they were talking about pub dates, WIP, galleys, ARC, and other strange things.

As you became familiar with the terms of the profession, you probably started using those terms as well. They no longer seemed strange.

Your readers may not have the same background you do. Of course if you are writing in an unfamiliar setting, there will be terms that are new to your readers. Whether you write historicals or futuristics, you introduce terms which may be new to your audience.

Usually, you can use narrative or dialogue to make the reader understand your meaning. However, in some cases, more effort is required. Some books use a glossary to define terms.

Articles and blogs can also introduce unfamiliar terms. When you become familiar with the jargon of the industry, you forget that others may not understand the terms.

A friend of mine has come up with a clever solution for WordPress blogs. (You are using WordPress for your blog, aren’t you?) He has created a glossary plugin. If you look in the sidebar, you’ll see the Glossary page.  You’ll find links to the glossary from terms throughout the posts in this blog.

If you would like to have this handy feature for your own blog, check out My Instant Glossary. He offers three different versions with a free trial for the Pro version (that I use).

Also, if you find terms in this blog that you feel should be in the glossary, please leave a comment and let me know.

When I ran the spell-checker on this post, it flagged a bunch of words. It doesn’t understand writing terms or common Internet terms such as WordPress, plugin, and sidebar. I suppose I had better add those to the glossary as well.

What is your favorite or confusing industry term? Leave a comment and tell me about it.

Write on,

Lynn