ABSTRACT
Humans make sense of things through the use of controlled vocabularies and standards. A controlled vocabulary is a collection of words with specic meaning; a standard is a collection of rules that determine how the words in the controlled vocabulary can be combined and used for a purpose. e English language can be thought of as one standard, with the controlled vocabulary being the words that comprise the language. us, the most obvious instance of a controlled vocabulary can be found in a dictionary. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary denes the words by which we communicate and provides the basis by which we understand each other. It is no surprise, then, that if computers are to communicate and to reason, they too must use standards and controlled vocabularies. Because computers do not have the benet of ve senses, it becomes all the more important to make standards and vocabularies as comprehensive and machine usable as possible.
