The jargon buster is a glossary of the acronyms, abbreviations and in-house terms that staff meet on the intranet. Each item is a small post: the title is the term and the content is its definition. A page using the Jargon buster template gathers every published item into one A to Z list, and each item also has a page of its own. This article covers adding and maintaining items; Jargon buster template describes the page that lists them.
Items live under Jargon busters in the admin menu. If the menu is missing, an administrator needs to switch on Jargon buster under Options, Modules; see Module settings and options. Contributors can write items for review, authors can publish their own, and editors and administrators can publish, edit and delete anyone’s. Client sites sometimes use custom roles; see Roles and capabilities.
Add an item
Go to Jargon busters, then Add jargon buster. The edit screen is the simplest in the theme: a title, the content editor, and the Publish, Featured image, Author and Excerpt boxes. Items have no categories, tags or comments, and none of the Document attachments, Related content, Sidebar content or Keywords boxes described in Boxes on every edit screen.
- Type the term as the title, exactly as staff would look it up: “FOI”, not “The FOI process”. The first character of the title decides which letter the item sits under on the Jargon buster page, and a title starting with a digit goes under 0-9.
- Write the definition in the content editor.
- Select Publish, or Save Draft to finish later. A draft can be previewed with a “Draft preview” badge at the top, and a future date in the Publish box schedules it. See Save, preview, schedule and publish pages and posts.
Where an acronym has two meanings, add two items with the expansion in the title, for example “PA (personal assistant)” and “PA (public affairs)”. Both sort under P.
Write a good definition
Start with the expansion of the acronym, then one or two sentences on what it means in your organisation. The Jargon buster page cuts a definition off after about four lines and adds a Show more button, so put the essential meaning in the first sentence and keep the rest short. A definition that fits in four lines is shown in full.
Links, bold text, lists and images all work in a definition. Rather than repeating a policy, link to the page, task or team that owns the subject; see Add links to pages including documents and email address links. When the Accessibility copilot option is on, saving warns about “click here” links and images without alt text, as on any content type.
Excerpt and featured image
Both are optional, and neither is shown on the Jargon buster page. The Excerpt box is hidden until you tick Excerpt under Screen Options at the top right. It is used only when the item appears as a search result: the card shows the first 25 words of the excerpt, or of the definition when there is no excerpt. As the definition is already a summary, there is rarely a reason to write one. See Generate an excerpt.
The featured image appears at the top of the item’s own page, with any caption set in the Media Library beneath it, and as a thumbnail on search result cards. Most items do not need one. See Set a featured image.
How the Jargon buster page shows it
As soon as an item is published it appears on any page using the Jargon buster template, under the heading for its first letter, in alphabetical order by title. The term is shown in bold in a narrow column with the definition beside it. The letter bar at the top only links to letters that have items; the rest are greyed out. Long definitions are collapsed behind Show more, which becomes Show less once opened; without JavaScript the whole definition is visible. There is nothing to edit on the Jargon buster page itself: its own content is not displayed. Only published items are listed; drafts, items awaiting review and scheduled items stay off the page.
The item’s own page
Each item has its own address: /jargon-buster/ followed by the slug made from the title, so “FOI” becomes /jargon-buster/foi/. Use it to link to a single definition from a page or news story. The item page uses the theme’s standard post layout: the breadcrumb trail (Home, then the term, because this module has no landing page setting), the term as the heading, the publish date, the author’s name, the featured image if there is one, and the definition. It has no sidebar, documents list, comments or like button.
Search
The theme’s own search does not include jargon buster items. On intranets that use the Relevanssi plugin, items are found when the Jargon buster type is ticked in Relevanssi’s indexing settings. They then appear in the All results with a “Jargon buster” label; there is no filter pill for them. To keep one item out of results, use the Relevanssi box on its edit screen; see Stop something appearing in search results. The jargon buster is separate from the A to Z index, which lists pages and other content rather than terms; see Add an item to the A to Z index.
Update or remove an item
Open the item from the Jargon busters list, change the title or definition and select Update. The Jargon buster page and the item’s own page change straight away, and changing the first character of the title moves the item to a different letter. Revisions are kept, so an earlier wording can be restored. To take an item down, select Move to Bin; it leaves the glossary at once and can be restored from the bin for 30 days. Switching the module off under Options, Modules hides the menu and every item but deletes nothing.