Glossary: Editing

The meanings for some terms used on this subsite.

Abandon: At a draft, discontinue the current editing workflow completely. Only shown for the master manager.
Accuracy: Type of Review type for making sure the content is accurate and relevant to the needs of the target audience.
Append: Add a child element, like an item to a list.
ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Interchange: basic Latin character set for telecommunications, and later used for computing. Extended by Unicode.
assign: Action by a master manager to allow a user, including themselves, to perform a task.
block: Structure that can be as simple as a horizontal line up to a section / subsection, and may contain other blocks. In a multilingual article, blocks will always be in the same order, whereas inline elements may be in different orders due to locale differences in word order.
byte: A cluster of eight binary bits used to measure computer storage, but also can represent one ASCII character.
codec: Short for coder/decoder, which translates one format into another, typically for reducing media file sizes for transmission and storage in more compact forms with minimal loss of fidelity.
CSS: Cascading Style Sheets. The rules defining how a page's elements are rendered.
Done: The phase indicating that all of the editing workflow for a locale is complete. Dependent locales are then available for editing.
draft: Version of an article for a Reviewing phase or conversion to a Release. Drafts must be manually deleted, or any leading up to a release are deleted during a Purge.
Edit: Subsequent phase after any Write or Translate phase for a locale is complete, often preceded by a formal Reviewing phase.
Editing: Access level for a manager or writer assigned to perform a task on an article.
editing workflow: Series of phases involved in maintaining an article throughout an editing cycle, from a work-in-progress (WIP) to a draft to a Release, covering the master locale to each dependent locale. See Editing phases.
element: inline or block which is modified using its Element block on the Article body page.
group: One of the collections of child elements for an element. The groups themselves are ordered to ensure that their child elements cannot be interspersed with those in other groups. They specify which elements are allowed and how many.
inline: Unit of text within a rich text block. They may be in different orders for different locales, due to differences in subject-verb-object, verb-adverb and noun-adjective order. See Inline element.
inline insert: Method of wrapping some text of an inline element with specific characters to produce another inline element. The list of available inline elements and the special characters required are listed at the bottom of the page, and can be jumped to by clicking the Tags link above the element's editing field.
inline rich-text: Special element that can be placed in a rich text element as if inline, but contain inline elements, such a quote element.
Insert: Action to add an element from the same group as the current element after it.
Merge: Action on an inline element that can append the text from the adjacent element of the same type and attributes before removing it.
MIME type: Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. Format type that allows embedding on a web page, though originally intended for handling email character sets and attachments.
Note: Optional incidental phase where a master manager can leave a note for the user assigned a task.
On hold: The phase for a master manager to take back control of an article. Any spike items for the article are removed from the user.
phase: Step in the process of managing the generation of a Release of an article.
Purge: Removes a Release of an article, along with any drafts after a previous release. Cannot be done for the latest release.
Query: Optional incidental phase where a user assigned a task can ask a question of the master manager.
Readability: Type of Review for making sure the content is likely to be understood by the target audience.
Release: Only version of an article that can be made publicly available. Can only be deleted by a Purge which also deletes any draft between it and the previous release.
Replace: Spike action that replaces the current element with the same or similar one from the spike. Typically, rich text elements like a list item or a footnote can replace a paragraph.
Review: Optional phase between a Write, Translate or Edit and more editing where comments are added to a element to indicate what needs to be changed. The three types of reviews are Accuracy, Readability and Spelling. The comments are removed when the article is made into a Release.
Reviewing: Access level for a manager or writer assigned to a Review phase for an article.
rich text: Type of element, like a paragraph, that can contain multiple inline formatting and functional elements.
Source: Access level for a manager or writer assigned to a task for an article to clone elements to a spike for inclusion in the article.
source article: Up to three articles can be made available by the master manager for sourcing content from, as a writer can normally only see articles that have been assigned to them.
Spelling: Review type for making sure the spelling and grammar is suitable for the target audience. For an international audience, minor variations may be alright, as people are used to them. However, a specific target audience may have higher expectations. While multiple reviewing types can be assigned for the same Review phase, leave this type until last because the content may drastically change as a result of the other review types.
spike: Type of cut-and-paste clipboard. There are three spikes, each of which can hold up to nine items. The third spike can be used to copy content from previous versions or a source article. Spikes belong to the user assigned to an article, but are removed when they lose access to the article they are editing. See Spikes.
target audience: The type of people for whom an article is meant to be useful. Being accurate with this enables proper focus to be maintained about what to write. However, be open to varying this if during writing the article, some others may also be seen to benefit.
task: One of Write, Translate, Edit or Review phase assigned to a manager or writer for altering an article.
Translate: Initial phase for generating a version of the content for a non-master locale.
Undo: Remove the latest edit version while in a Write, Translate or Edit phase. Click the Undo checkbox, and then the Confirm button. This operation is not reversible. Most useful to recover from an unwanted deletion of an element.
Unicode: Character set covering an ever-widening number of the world's written languages and scripts. While there are several ways to code these characters, the most commonly used one on the internet is UTF-8, which uses a varying number of bytes, but is compatible with all basic ASCII codes.
Unwrap: Action on a compound element like a paragraph or list, that writes out all its component elements to spike 3, even if there are more than the nine that are the normal limit for a spike.
UTF-8: Variable-length encoding of Unicode characters that makes ASCII characters only use one byte while rarer characters may use up to four.
View: Open a draft or work-in-progress (WIP) for viewing as a normal web page in a browser. Can only be invoked by a user with Viewing access to the article. After 30 minutes, it will be unavailable.
Viewing: Read only access level to an article. Only available to a user allowed access to a previous version or source article.
work-in-progress (WIP): Temporary version of an article created after each change made any of its inline items or blocks. Any previous WIP is deleted when one is made into a draft, so if wanting to keep some content from an earlier WIP for possible later use, convert it to a draft before doing so to a later one.
Write: The phase where the text of an article for the master locale is created.