As an inline, glossterms frequently get special typographic treatment, such as italics. In an online environment, they may also form a link (explicitly or implicitly) to the corresponding definition in a glossary.

The glossterms must not be nested within other glossterms. The processing of nested glossterms is undefined.

As part of a glossentry, glossterms are usually set as a block and separated from the definition.

Common attributes and common linking attributes.

These elements contain glossterm: biblioentry, bibliomixed, bibliomset, biblioset, bridgehead, caption (db.html.caption), citation, citetitle, classsynopsisinfo, contrib, emphasis (db.emphasis), entry, firstterm (db.firstterm), foreignphrase (db.foreignphrase), funcsynopsisinfo, glossentry, glosssee, glossseealso, glossterm (db.glossterm), link, literallayout, member, olink, orgdiv, para, phrase (db.phrase), primary, primaryie, programlisting, quote (db.quote), refdescriptor, refentrytitle, refname, refpurpose, remark, screen, secondary, secondaryie, see, seealso, seealsoie, seeie, seg, segtitle, simpara, subtitle, synopsis, td, term, termdef, tertiary, tertiaryie, th, title, titleabbrev, tocentry.

The following elements occur in glossterm: text, abbrev, accel, acronym, alt, anchor, annotation, application, author, biblioref, citation, citebiblioid, citerefentry, citetitle, classname, code, command, computeroutput, constant, coref, database, date, editor, email, emphasis (db._emphasis), emphasis (db.emphasis), envar, errorcode, errorname, errortext, errortype, exceptionname, filename, firstterm (db._firstterm), firstterm (db.firstterm), footnote, footnoteref, foreignphrase (db._foreignphrase), foreignphrase (db.foreignphrase), function, glossterm (db._glossterm), glossterm (db.glossterm), guibutton, guiicon, guilabel, guimenu, guimenuitem, guisubmenu, hardware, indexterm (db.indexterm.endofrange), indexterm (db.indexterm.singular), indexterm (db.indexterm.startofrange), initializer, inlineequation, inlinemediaobject, interfacename, jobtitle, keycap, keycode, keycombo, keysym, link, literal, markup, menuchoice, methodname, modifier, mousebutton, nonterminal, olink, ooclass, ooexception, oointerface, option, optional, org, orgname, package, parameter, person, personname, phrase (db._phrase), phrase (db.phrase), productname, productnumber, prompt, property, quote (db._quote), quote (db.quote), remark, replaceable, returnvalue, shortcut, subscript, superscript, symbol, systemitem, tag, termdef, token, trademark, type, uri, userinput, varname, wordasword, xref.