ABSTRACT
Control of terminology in a thesaurus is achieved in various ways. First, the form of the term is controlled, whether this involves grammatical form, spelling, singular and plural form, abbreviations or compound form of the term. Second, a choice is made between two or more synonyms available to express the same concept. Third, a decision is to be made on whether to admit, and how to treat, certain types of terms, such as loan words, slang words, trade names and proper names. Fourth, the meaning of the term, which in a dictionary might be accompanied by illustrations of different usage, is deliberately restricted to that most effective for the purposes of a particular thesaurus. The restriction is indicated in a thesaurus by the addition of scope notes and definitions, and qualifying phrases in the case of homographs. All these methods of thesaurus control are dealt with in this section, except for compound terms which are considered in Section E. Synonyms and quasi-synonyms, although mentioned here under choice of term, are dealt with more fully in F1.1.
