National foreword

This British Standard is the UK implementation of ISO 10241‑1:2011.

The UK participation in its preparation was entrusted to Technical Committee TS/1, Terminology.

A list of organizations represented on this committee can be obtained on request to its secretary.

This publication does not purport to include all the necessary provisions of a contract. Users are responsible for its correct application.

Compliance with a British Standard cannot confer immunity from legal obligations.

This British Standard was published under the authority of the Standards Policy and Strategy Committee on 31 May 2011.

Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies (ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out through ISO technical committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical committee has been established has the right to be represented on that committee. International organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work. ISO collaborates closely with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on all matters of electrotechnical standardization.

International Standards are drafted in accordance with the rules given in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2.

The main task of technical committees is to prepare International Standards. Draft International Standards adopted by the technical committees are circulated to the member bodies for voting. Publication as an International Standard requires approval by at least 75 % of the member bodies casting a vote.

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. ISO shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

ISO 10241‑1 was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 37, Terminology and other language and content resources, Subcommittee SC 2, Terminographical and lexicographical working methods.

This first edition of ISO 10241‑1 cancels and replaces ISO 10241:1992. The revision comprises the following main changes:

a broadening of the scope to cover terminological entries in all types of standard;
consideration of the fact that terminology work is increasingly carried out using computers;
consideration of data in multilingual terminological entries in standards (including those residing in distributed databases);
a more comprehensive and explicit structure of the individual terminological entries;
a limitation of the normative technical content of this part of ISO 10241 to cover the drafting and structuring of terminological entries and not their layout and presentation (a typical example of layout and presentation are provided for information in Annex A).

ISO 10241 consists of the following parts, under the general title Terminological entries in standards:

Part 1: General requirements and examples of presentation
Part 2: Adoption of standardized terminological entries

Guidelines concerning large-scale terminological project management, leading to terminology standards or a series of terminology standards, are provided in ISO 15188. These guidelines supplement the rules contained in this part of ISO 10241.

Introduction

To ensure that communication in a particular domain is effective and that difficulties in understanding are minimized, it is essential that the various participants use the same concepts and concept representations. The standardization of terms and definitions is thus fundamental to all standardization activities.

Even when the immediate results of standardization are monolingual terminological entries, to facilitate communication in science and technology, cross-cultural communication, the exchange of goods and services, as well as the formulation of policies and strategies at national, regional and international levels, terminology work has to be multilingual in its approach. Even in countries with only one official national language, standardizing bodies sometimes prepare multilingual terminological entries for the purposes mentioned above.

Standardizing bodies often choose to standardize terms and definitions and to publish the result as terminological entries in standards. This part of ISO 10241 has been prepared to provide rules for the drafting and structuring of such terminological entries in standards; it is based on the principles and methods given in ISO 704.

Within ISO, the standardization of principles and methods for the preparation of terminological data primarily referring to concepts and terms is under the responsibility of ISO/TC 37.

ISO/TC 12 and IEC/TC 25 are responsible for the symbols for quantities and units. These symbols are often derived from terms, and often look like an abbreviated form of the term, although the symbols have an additional communicative function. They are the subject of the ISO 80000, IEC 80000 and IEC 60027 standards.

ISO/TC 145 is responsible within ISO for the overall coordination of standardization in the field of graphical symbols, with the exception of those for technical product documentation. This responsibility includes

the standardization of graphical symbols, colours and shapes, whenever these elements form part of the message that a symbol is intended to convey (e.g. a safety sign), and
the establishment of principles for the preparation, coordination and application of graphical symbols.

Although the work of ISO/TC 145 excludes the standardization of letters, numerals, syntactic signs, mathematical signs and symbols as well as symbols for quantities and units, such elements may be used as components of a graphical symbol.

1 Scope

This part of ISO 10241 specifies requirements for the drafting and structuring of terminological entries in standards, exemplified by terminological entries in ISO and IEC documents. Terms and other designations occurring in terminological entries can include letters, numerals, mathematical symbols, typographical signs and syntactic signs (e.g. punctuation marks, hyphens, parentheses, square brackets and other connectors or delimiters), sometimes in character styles (i.e. fonts and bold, italic, bold italic or other style conventions) governed by language-, domain- or subject-specific conventions. Terms can also include standardized symbols (which can be language independent or internationally harmonized, such as symbols for quantities and units as well as graphical symbols) which are under the responsibility of different committees in ISO and IEC.

This part of ISO 10241 is based on the principles and methods given in ISO 704 and provides rules for both monolingual and multilingual terminological entries in standards and their indexes.

NOTE 1 Annex I of the IEC Supplement to the ISO/IEC Directives^[1] for the work on the International Electrotechnical Vocabulary (IEV) is based on the standards prepared by ISO/TC 37. Due to specific requirements, the rules provided in this Supplement are sometimes different from the rules given in this part of ISO 10241.

This part of ISO 10241 is applicable to all standards that contain terminological entries. It does not deal with the administrative procedures or the technical specifications required by standardizing bodies for the preparation of terminology standards.

NOTE 2 Administrative procedures for the preparation of standards are specific to the standardizing body. For example, in ISO and IEC these rules are provided in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1^[2].

Since presentation and layout rules by nature are very much tied to the script and to the publishing rules of the standardizing body, they are dealt with only on an abstract level in this part of ISO 10241. Examples and rules for a typical layout and presentation in documents are provided for information in Annex A.

2 Normative references

3 Terms and definitions

3.1 Standardization of terms and definitions

3.2 Concepts and their arrangement

3.3 Domain and subject

3.4 Concept representation

4 Preparation of terminological entries

4.1 General principles

4.2 Scope of standards containing terminological entries

4.3 Organization of preparatory work

4.4 Implementation phase

4.5 Selection of concepts

5 Organization and structure of terminological entries and their data categories in standards

5.1 Organization of terminological entries

5.2 Information concerning the manner in which the terminological data are presented in a standard

5.3 Overview of data categories of a standardized terminological entry in accordance with this part of ISO 10241

6 Requirements for the content and drafting of terminological entries

6.1 Entry number

6.2 Terms

6.3 Symbols

6.4 Definitions

6.5 Non-verbal representations

6.6 Examples

6.7 Notes to entry

6.8 Source indication in a terminological entry

6.9 Reusing terminological entries

7 Terminological entries in multilingual international standards

8 Indexes

8.1 Objective of indexes

8.2 Indexes for multilingual terminology standards

8.3 Indexes for terminology standards with language-specific order

8.4 Indication of the normative status

8.5 Index of all keywords contained in the terms and other verbal designations of the terminological entries

Bibliography

BS ISO 10241-1:2011

Terminological entries in standards - General requirements and examples of presentation

Current

Published:

31 May 2011