Glossstyle

Glossstyle is a term used in linguistics and lexicography to describe a standardized presentation style for glossed text. It denotes a coherent set of typographic and encoding conventions intended to make morpheme-by-morpheme glosses clear and easily comparable across entries. Glossstyle emphasizes clear alignment between a base text and its gloss, consistent abbreviation schemes, and readable typography.

Common features include two main formats: inline glosses, where short glosses appear directly with the word, and line-by-line glosses, where a separate gloss line runs beneath or beside the base text. It also supports explicit alignment of morphemes, standardized abbreviations (for person, number, tense, etc.), and optional color-coding or typographic cues to distinguish grammatical categories. In digital editions, glossstyle is often implemented with markup that anchors gloss segments to the corresponding base segments, facilitating search and automatic rendering. It is compatible with Unicode and IPA notation where relevant.

Usage and scope: Glossstyle is used in field linguistics, language documentation, and lexicography to produce compact yet readable glossed data. It is typically described in project style guides or encoding specifications and may be realized via XML/TEI schemas, Markdown with custom CSS, or other markup systems.

Relation to related concepts: Glossstyle is closely related to interlinear glossed text (IGT) conventions and to established dictionary and corpus encoding practices. While not a single formal standard, it provides a practical reference framework for presenting glossed data consistently.