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I am writing a book that is a collection of interesting words.

Each word will have several subsections (definition, etymology, usage ...things like that).

What's a good format for such a book? I don't want the usual LaTeX book with numbered chapters, sections and subsections.

EDIT: I was asked to be more specific.

The book is divided into chapters by "type of word" so I have, e.g.

  1. Introduction
  2. Words about human beings
  3. Words that deserve to be brought back from obscurity .... xx. Sources

In each of the sections (except first and last) I have a section for each word, with subsections for they parts of any entry. My sections will be longer and more sectioned than a typical dictionary. I am not just defining the words but talking about how they are used.

The template used for the Oxford English Dictionary would be something like what I have in mind (but I will have different sections).

And I'd like the overall book to look like a typical dictionary, e.g.

page numbers

unnumbered chapters

unnumbered sections and subsections

bolded key words

and so on.

I'm not sure what else you need to know.

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  • 1
    Please be more specific. Btw, glossaries+xindy+xelatex would be nice for those purposes (they support Unicode).
    – user193767
    Commented Apr 5, 2020 at 0:29
  • If you don't want numbered chapters, don't use numbered chapters. Or chapters at all. Use article and turn off the numbering. Or have a look at glossaries as suggested, so you can use a database approach. I don't really know what you are asking for.
    – Johannes_B
    Commented Apr 5, 2020 at 2:58
  • 1
    Will the words and explanatory material be input in the order in which it will appear, or will it be drawn from somewhere else and require sorting into its final order?
    – barbara beeton
    Commented Apr 5, 2020 at 19:59
  • They will be in the input order. I will sort them in the .tex file.
    – Peter Flom
    Commented Apr 5, 2020 at 21:45

1 Answer 1

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I hope that this will help, although I don't claim to fully understand what you want and I don't know about "templates"; are they the spawn of the devil? --- GOM

% dictionaryprob.tex SE 536844  template? for dictionaries

\documentclass{memoir}
\setsecumdepth{part} & chapters and below are not numbered

\begin{document}
\frontmatter
% the title
\tableofcontents % if you want this, and why not?
\mainmatter
\chapter{Introduction}
Some text
\chapter{Human Beings}
  \section{A section}
    \subsection{A subsection}
\chapter{Obscure words}
  \section{Another section}
\backmatter
% indexes and so on
\end{document}

For more about what memoir can do for you, such as change the page layout or restyle the document divisions, read the documentation (texdoc memoir).

For keywords you will have to use an appropriate package (whatever that is --- perhaps ask a separate question about this).

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  • THanks. I will look into memoir. I had heard of it, but haven't really worked with it.
    – Peter Flom
    Commented Apr 5, 2020 at 21:44
  • @peter memoir is not specific to your task, you could do the same with any other class that puts text on a page. Your question asks for that, putting text on a page with no real specifics.
    – Johannes_B
    Commented Apr 9, 2020 at 5:44
  • @Johannes_B Thank you for your comment --- GOP
    – Peter Wilson
    Commented Apr 10, 2020 at 18:30

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