---
title: "Glossary Guidelines Template"
url: "https://atlan.com/resources/glossary-guidelines-template/"
description: "A comprehensive template for building and maintaining glossaries in Atlan, ensuring that terms, categories, and linked assets are consistent, clear, and useful across the organization."
---

> Atlan is hosting Context Conference, bringing together the leaders and builders at the frontier of giving AI the context it needs to understand their business. It runs online on October 28, 2026, from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM ET. Atlan co-founder Prukalpa Sankar opens and closes the day. Leaders from AstraZeneca, BNY and Verizon share why they invest in context and what they get from it. Registrants get early access to The AI Context Gap, a new study from MIT Technology Review Insights. Register: https://atlan.com/context-conference/

A comprehensive template for building and maintaining glossaries in Atlan, so terms, categories, and linked assets stay consistent, clear, and useful across the organization. It includes best practices, rules, and examples teams can adapt to their own glossary creation and governance processes.

Page heading: Template: Atlan Glossary Guidelines.

## About this template

**Glossaries** (pages 1-3)

- Name glossaries so they are high-level, distinct, and descriptive.
- Consistent formatting: all lowercase except proper nouns and acronyms; pluralize where appropriate.
- Governance: only admins add new glossaries; each glossary has assigned owners, experts, and a meaningful description with examples beyond the title.

**Categories** (pages 4-6)

- Categories group related terms within a glossary.
- Balance specificity and generality, use plurals where possible, and align with both the glossary and its terms.
- Use subcategories with restraint to avoid navigation difficulties and maintenance overhead.

**Terms** (page 6)

- Use familiar, singular names and clear processes for adding terms to prevent duplication.
- Related terms: synonyms, classifications, and other relationships increase clarity.

**Linked assets** (page 8)

- Glossary terms connect directly to SQL assets, tables, or models, aligning business definitions with the data behind them so users understand both a term's meaning and its data sources.

The result is a glossary that serves as a shared language, reduces ambiguity, and bridges business and technical teams.

## Related resources

- [Use Case Guide: Impact Analysis](https://atlan.com/resources/use-case-impact-analysis) (guide)
- [Translating User Stories to Metadata](https://atlan.com/blueprint-resource-user-stories-to-metadata) (guide)