Community Suggestion: Improved Dictionary Visibility and Formatting For Language Articles
Improved Dictionary Visibility and Formatting For Language Articles
New Feature Addition · Articles & templates · Created by BCGR_Wurth
accepted
Article Reader-Experience Language-Template Dictionary Search-Functionality Definitions Export
What functionality is missing? What is unsatisfying with the current situation?
Currently, the dictionary in language articles is somewhat inaccessible to casual browsing. Words and phrases must be searched for using the text box, but, if the author misspelled the word being searched for, created a word with only one or two letters, or had to use esoteric terms to define a word, then that definition might not appear even with a proper search. Interesting constructions might also go unnoticed by the casual reader because, short of having a definition directly referenced in the article, these words won’t visually ‘present’ themselves to the reader - they must still be searched out with an intuition towards the author’s style of writing. Exporting to CSV to create a table or external spreadsheet for better visualization doesn’t necessarily help, either, because definitions that contain a comma mess up the formatting when exported to CSV (which does stand for Comma-Separated Values after all). As an example from my own worldbuilding, I have a language that uses the word ‘a’ as the conjunction ‘and’ in English. Searching ‘a’ will not pull up the word, as the string is too short, but searching ‘and’ will pull up tons of words where ‘and’ is used in the definition. In both cases, a reader couldn’t simply scroll through words at-will to find this definition, as the sidebar is otherwise empty of definitions until a search is initiated by typing at least three letters in the search box. Luckily, the ‘and’ definition does appear first in this case because the search list is alphabetized, but for a language like Spanish where ‘and’ is translated as ‘y’ and ‘or’ as ‘o’ - or Toki Pona where ‘is’ is roughly translated as ‘li’ - tiny words with tiny definitions below the size of the minimum search would leave the reader with a potentially arduous search process despite the ubiquity of those words.How does this feature request address the current situation?
I suggest several approaches to fixing the visibility situation with regards to dictionary definitions. First, the word list could be displayed in a scrolling box in a sidebar under the search box. This seems like a plausible implementation of this feature because, aside from the scrolling feature, a complete list of words is already displayed on the dictionary page when editing a language article. This might not be practicable from a performance perspective, though, as I have noticed that the dictionary edit tab can freeze sometimes under the load if the dictionary is super long. Instead, to reduce overhead, the display box could instead be designed to display a set number of words with “next” and “back” buttons to move through the list. Second, a small selection of search options could be implemented under the search bar, perhaps in a spoiler-style hidden box. This would include features like searching for just particular fields (spelling, pronunciation, part of speech, etc.), matching letter case, and so forth, as well as a button to start the search in case the minimum of three letters isn’t met in the search term. Third, an additional option for export file format might be implemented, such as JSON, perhaps along with an option to import from whatever format is chosen. The format should be able to distinguish between fields without being messed up by punctuation that would be incident to natural language writing, such as commas.What are other uses for this feature request?
Aside from improving visibility, these features would also help the writer with the revision process. I often use the public-facing version of the article in a separate tab to help with searching the dictionary when making my own edits, as I do notice that this page is more performant and I want to make sure that things look right from the perspective of the reader.Follow up
To clarify, this suggestion is primarily about the publicly visible side of the article, not the part we can edit as world authors. The dictionary tab on the edit screen already allows us to scroll through to find a word, though the search functionality on that end could also be updated with some of the options under the second point above.
The Team's Response
Thanks for the suggestion! We're accepting this for investigation for the next update to the dictionary. Note that the minimum 3 characters for search to trigger will most likely stay for performance reasons (it could slow down not only your world but World Anvil as a whole).
Current score
30/300 Votes · +8700 points
Votes Cast
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+300
by A Wild Dwarf
on 2025-11-22 16:18 -
+100
by Alikzander_Wulfe
on 2025-11-14 16:48Just having people be able to peruse the dictionary in any capacity would be useful for sure.
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+300
by RibenLARP
on 2025-11-14 08:38 -
+300
by kalilinai
on 2025-11-10 16:26 -
+300
by kerahope
on 2025-11-05 20:48 -
+100
by Leijona
on 2025-11-05 20:03 -
+300
by yatenari
on 2025-10-30 21:20 -
+300
by twirlingfox
on 2025-10-28 21:14 -
+300
by jglavz
on 2025-10-27 12:07 -
+300
by SrSpaceCadet
on 2025-10-26 20:29 -
+300
by Pandora9
on 2025-10-26 20:18 -
+300
by JoellaKay
on 2025-10-26 15:24 -
+300
by AuraGuard
on 2025-10-24 19:49 -
+300
by Jupiter Melichios
on 2025-10-23 17:11Some improvements to the dictionary would be great, it's really not very useful as is.
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+300
by TheDoctor292
on 2025-10-23 06:55 -
+300
by A Filthy T-Rex
on 2025-10-22 16:10My world has complicated, weird, hard to spell, and just generally strange words, so this would be amazing.
-
+300
by corviq
on 2025-10-19 22:22 -
+300
by Willow H.R. Harper
on 2025-10-19 21:05 -
+300
by kaixabu
on 2025-10-19 14:45 -
+300
by Kittymonster
on 2025-10-19 07:40 -
+100
by Lady-knight
on 2025-10-19 02:20 -
+300
by A Uncontrollable Ooze
on 2025-10-18 22:24 -
+300
by Kummer Wolfe
on 2025-10-18 17:24Very good idea. I've similar issues with the languages I've created and it is a little frustrating. This could resolve that.
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+300
by the Library Collective
on 2025-10-18 14:28 -
+300
by Ratha
on 2025-10-18 14:13 -
+300
by A Fierce Dwarf
on 2025-10-18 12:28 -
+300
by A Uncontrollable Orc
on 2025-10-18 10:35 -
+300
by Scott Story
on 2025-10-18 06:56 -
+300
by Mochimanoban
on 2025-10-18 05:56 -
+300
by DramaticDragons
on 2025-10-18 04:28 -
+300
by BCGR_Wurth
on 2025-10-18 03:36
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