When is a glossary necessary?

[Carole]

I think I might need to consider adding a glossary to my book, but I am not sure. There are a lot of acronyms and specific terms used and since some of my material contains quotes, I need to leave them as they are.

Is there a better way of clarifying the information? I thought about putting brief explanations in parenthesis beside the acronyms or confusing terms, but on some pages it turns into a mess and looks unprofessional.

This isn't the case throughout the book, but in certain chapters the acronyms are essential so I can't just drop them.

[scfirenice]

I'm not sure but the first time you use an acronym try speling it out ex. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Then after that use just FDA. If you only have a few such terms it will work, if you have enough to fill a page or so, you could always reference them in the back. This is in no way an expert opinion. Wait for some of the pros to swing by.

[Carole]

I have thought about that. The one problem with it is that many of the acronyms appear in a quote. Otherwise, I'd just spell it out and avoid confusion in the first place. Do you think it would be odd to have the meaning in () in the middle of a quote?

[TashaGoddard]

It sounds as though the glossary might be a useful feature, particularly if acronyms appear within quotes. Another possible solution could be to use footnotes. I would assume, if you've got quite a lot of quotes, that you'll be having a bibliography/references section, so including a glossary might fit better. However, these kinds of decision may come down to the publisher, in the end. I would suggest, therefore that, as long as you keep some kind of log of both glossable words/acronyms and references, this will be enough for you/the publisher to format them in whatever way is decided best.

Hope that helps.

[Carole]

That does help. Thanks :) I don't have an unusually high number of quotes, but nearly all of them contain acronyms. That was the problem. I didn't want to break up the quotes to insert explanations, but I didn't want readers to be scratching their heads, either.