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Jpetrous90
Jpetrous90
Participant
March 25, 2020
Question

Create a Glossary in InDesign

  • March 25, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 6019 views

I want to create a Glossary or something similar to it in InDesign for a book that I am working on. What I want is not an index. Though I feel that the "Index" option may be the way to make what I am trying to do. I just can't find anything to support what I want. 

 

Ideally, I would like to have certain words or phrases that are important to appear or populate automatically under assigned categories as well as alphabetically. For example, if I wanted to sort one topic as "Characters" then another as "Locations" and have topics appear under each like "John Doe" under characters then an about him or her and also "Some Kind of Desert" as an area under location with a description of it would be perfect. Then as more things are added have them all sorted alphabetically. 

 

Any suggestions from the wizards of the internet would be helpful, and very much appreciated!

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1 reply

Colin Flashman
Community Expert
Colin FlashmanCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 26, 2020

As of now there isn't a way to do this, but certainly worth suggesting it as a feature request: https://indesign.uservoice.com/

Speaking for myself, glossaries are usually added as another text frame. What could be done is to assign a character style called "for glossary" that doesn't change the appearance of the type but can be called upon by a script such as Indiscript's Indexmatic that can make an index independent of InDesign's index feature: http://www.indiscripts.com/category/projects/IndexMatic - from there you will have a list of words in alpha order, and all that is left to do is add the descriptions for the words used in the glossary.

 

If the answer wasn't in my post, perhaps it might be on my blog at colecandoo!
    Jpetrous90
    Jpetrous90Author
    Participant
    April 12, 2020

    Thank you for that information! I can definitely try doing that.

     

    My next question would be this then; could I adjust the text to be sorted in a particular way? As I previously mentioned, I will have instead of the typical "A", "B", "C", etc., it would be "Characters", "Locations", etc.. And then under characters or locations there would be additional information on those mentioned, and the "Main Category" of characters and locations being sorting alphabetically and also everything in the "Sub Category" be sorted alphabetically as well. 

     

    Is that something possible still with what you mentioned or I am being a dreamer?

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