The PreTeXt Guide

A glossary is a list, in alphabetical order, of foreign or unfamiliar words, along with definitions. [1, 1.87]

A <glossary> division may be placed inside any main matter division, and at most once in the <backmatter>. In either event, the Chicago Manual of Style [1, 1.87] indicates that it should be placed right before a <references>.

After a <title>, index entries, and other metadata, a <glossary> division may begin with an optional <headnote>, which can use paragraphs to explain anything unusual about the construction of a particular glossary.

The remainder of a glossary is a sequence of items to explain. Typically these are words, phrases, initialisms, or acronyms. Each item is a “glossary item”, enclosed in a shorthand <gi> element. The element must lead with a <title>, which is the term being explained. PreTeXt will provide a period after each defined word, so there should not be any punctuation in your source at this location. The term should not have any markup, unless the markup is used in every occurence of the term in the text. Similarly, a term is capitalized only if it is capitalized routinely in the text.

The explanation itself follows, typically in a sequence of paragraphs, but unnumbered items, such as an <image> may also be used. It is the author’s responsibility to create the list in alphabetical order. Automatic groupss (according to initial letter) are a pending feature request, perhaps especially for a final, overall, back matter glossary, much like an index. See GitHub #1971¹.

Many of the preceding recommendations can be found in Chicago Manual of Style [1, 2.28]. For an example, see the glossary in the back matter of this Guide.