The intent of the following guidelines shall assist in the consistent creation of dictionary entries. These guidelines present somewhat of an ideal, at times and with good reason of course it may be necessary to deviate from them.
First, please remember that this is a dictionary and not a collection of essays or articles. It is not intended to teach or instruct, but instead think of it as a roadmap. The idea is to present a short overview of what Elias means when using specific words and to merely provide a jump point and directions for the reader if he wants to explore the concept behind the word in depth.
The important point is to let Elias speak for himself, so the entries should be mostly built from quotes. The quotes in the main part of the entry should be unaltered and should be as short as possible, yet as long as necessary to show the meaning of the word.
Where possible, use Elias quotes without a dialog and use highlighting of text only where absolutely necessary. The reason for the restriction in highlighting is that highlighting interupts the flow of reading and tends to draw the attention exclusively to the highlighted text. If you feel that you need highlighting, maybe the quote is too long or maybe you can find a more pointed quote. Do not underestimate the reader and remember that the purpose of the entry is to merely be guding and not trying to teach and also not trying to proove something.
Ideally there should a short introduction which outlines the point which is presented through the quote. But the introduction should also merely guide towards the a specific point of the quote and should not necessarily elaborate on it. Also, be sure to present the interpretation as Elias' view of things and not as fact or truth (i.e. use expressions like "according to Elias", "Elias uses the word in a way", "Elias defines this word as", etc.).
Another task of the introduction is to bring related words and terms to the attention of the reader, i.e. to put the word into a context with other related words. The see also part of the entries also does that, but if words are closely related to each other or often appear together, this should be pointed out in the introduction.
Linking to related words is considered to be an essential part of the dictionary. An entry which does not link to related topics is probably only of limited use for the reader. However, mostly it should be sufficient to only cross link the first occurrence of a word, especially if the words appears more than once in the same paragraph. In other words, when the reader did choose to not follow a link to the word belief on the first occurrence, he is most likely not interested in the word, so it is unnecessary to interrupt the typesetting and the flow of the text by placing further links to the same word.
If an introduction is available, the quotes should also not contain links to other topics. Instead these should appear in the introduction. If no introduction is available, placing links in quotes is okay.
The task of the More Quotes section is to provide further background if the reader chooses to explore the topic in depth. It should contain quotes, but no comments. Quotes here can be longer (although they should not have excess length) and can also include dialogs, e.g. where a session participant asks for clarification of an aspect or where Elias explains the multiple words in relation to each other. Highlighting is still discouraged.
If other essences provide some interesting insights related to the same topic, place links and explanation under this headline.
Provide links to other related dictionary words here if they did not easily fit into the introduction. Also provide links to full sessions (if a session mainly deals with the topic at hand) or to the same word on the index on www.eliasweb.at or to a digest on www.eliasforum.org. Other outside links are okay if they seem closely related to the topic, but the See also section should not turn into a dump for arbitrarly links.