Build the glossary without rereading the whole document
The problem with a glossary was never writing the definitions. It was finding where each one ended up. HILO gathers every passage where your document defines, uses, or qualifies your main terms, so you can write the glossary entry with everything you already wrote in view.
- Each term with all its passages and their pages
- They appear together: if you contradicted yourself, it shows
- Downloads as an appendix ready for the document
You can try it without signing up with a document of your own, searching by keyword. To search by meaning, create a free account: it comes with 100 welcome hilos, the unit HILO uses to measure AI usage.
Each term's passages, together and with their page
Not an invented definition: what your document already says. If a term was defined two different ways in different chapters, both appear side by side, which is when you find out.
Term: theoretical saturation
- p. 47
- Theoretical saturation was reached when the last three interviews stopped contributing new categories.
- p. 112
- The saturation criterion was set in advance as two consecutive interviews with no emergent codes.
- p. 186
- Saturation, understood here in a broad sense, guided the close of the fieldwork.
You write the definition. The tool puts on the table everything you need to write it well.
When the document is long and the terms are your own
The definitions appendix
The terms your theoretical framework builds, with the passages where you define them.
Manuals and documentation
A manual written by several hands defines the same thing three ways. The glossary is where that gets fixed.
Internal regulations
The definitions in a regulation have consequences. Seeing them together keeps two articles from saying different things.
Project glossaries
Before translating, settle how each term is said and where each use appears.
Three steps, without leaving the tool
- You upload the document. Word or PDF.
- You type a term and gather. The passages where it appears defined or used come back, with their page. You repeat it for each term in the glossary.
- You download. Each term with its passages and their pages, in a file that opens in Word.
What it does is gather everything your document already says about each term, with the page, so you write the definition looking at the material instead of relying on memory.
In practice they come from the table of contents, the theoretical framework, and what your advisor flagged. If a term appears only twice in the whole document, it probably doesn't belong in the glossary.
Yes. It searches by meaning, not by exact match, so “theoretical saturation” also brings up the passages where you wrote “saturation point”. Without AI it works the same way, but by keyword.
Yes. The search works in the language of the document; the interface is in Spanish, Portuguese and English.
You see both, side by side, with their pages. It's the most useful finding when building a glossary and the hardest one to find by reading.
Build your first term
Upload the document, type a term, and see where each definition ended up.