What markup indicates a newly introduced word?

Question

Suppose I am writing a book where I want to mark newly introduced words. What is the LaTeX markup in say, the following passage from The Lorax (Dr. Suess)?

And with great skillful skill and with great speedy speed,
I took the soft tuft. And I knitted a \whatgoeshere{Thneed}!

My present concern is that newly introduced words be given a distinct appearance (I am tempted to use \emph, but that does not have the same meaning.) However, another usage might be that somewhere else in the book, there would be an automatically generated index or glossary entry that references this instance (maybe this is an edition for speakers of a language where thneed actually means something, and an explanation might be in order).

Answer 1

As long as you define \whatgoeshere, you can define whatever it should do, whether that be \emph, \textbf, or an entry into glossaries. So, perhaps avoid \emph and use \newword in a consistent way:

\documentclass{article}

% https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/29846/5764
\newcommand{\newword}{\textbf}

\begin{document}

And with great skillful skill and with great speedy speed,
I took the soft tuft. And I knitted a \newword{Thneed}!

\end{document}

Answer 2

I propose to use a superscript, like this:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{garamondx}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{verse}

\newcommand{\newword}[1]{#1\textsuperscript{\textup{\mdseries\scriptsize\scshape n}}}

\begin{document}

\setlength{\afterpoemtitleskip}{8ex}
\renewcommand{\poemtitlefont}{\centering\itshape\Large}
\settowidth{\versewidth}{When they saw him nearing the further side –} %

\poemtitle{ The \newword{Pobble\kern1pt} who has no Toes}

\begin{verse}[\versewidth]
\begin{altverse}
The Pobble swam fast and well, \\
And when boats or ships came near him, \\
He\newword{ tinkledy}-\newword{blinkledy}-winkled a bell, \\
So that all the world could hear him. \\
And all the Sailors and Admirals cried, \\
When they saw him nearing the further side – \\
‘He has gone to fish for his Aunt Jobiska's \\
\newword{Runcible} Cat with crimson whiskers!’
\end{altverse}
\end{verse}

\end{document} 

Answer 3

When you edit your document there's a chance that sections may be moved around and it's possible to lose track of the first time you use a word. The glossaries package helps with this by having a "first use flag". The MWE below uses the glossaries-extra extension package, which is more versatile.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{glossaries-extra}

\newglossaryentry{Thneed}{name={Thneed},description={knitted object}}

% \glsxtrregularfont is a glossaries-extra.sty command
\renewcommand*{\glsxtrregularfont}[1]{%
 \ifglsused{\glslabel}{#1}{\textbf{#1}}%
}

\begin{document}

And with great skillful skill and with great speedy speed,
I took the soft tuft. And I knitted a \gls{Thneed}!

Next use: \gls{Thneed}.
\end{document}

If at a later date you decide that you want a summary of all the terms, you can just add \printunsrtglossary:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{glossaries-extra}

\newglossaryentry{Thneed}{name={Thneed},description={knitted object}}

% \glsxtrregularfont is a glossaries-extra.sty command    
\renewcommand*{\glsxtrregularfont}[1]{%
 \ifglsused{\glslabel}{#1}{\textbf{#1}}%
}

\begin{document}

And with great skillful skill and with great speedy speed,
I took the soft tuft. And I knitted a \gls{Thneed}!

Next use: \gls{Thneed}.

% \printunsrtglossary is a glossaries-extra.sty command:
\printunsrtglossary[title=Summary]
\end{document}

This lists all the defined terms in order of definition. If you want a sorted list with page/section references, then it gets a bit more complicated.

With just the base glossaries package, the first example can be rewritten as:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{glossaries}

\newglossaryentry{Thneed}{name={Thneed},description={knitted object}}

\renewcommand*{\glsentryfmt}{%
 \ifglsused{\glslabel}{\glsgenentryfmt}{\textbf{\glsgenentryfmt}}%
}

\begin{document}

And with great skillful skill and with great speedy speed,
I took the soft tuft. And I knitted a \gls{Thneed}!

Next use: \gls{Thneed}.
\end{document}

The \printunsrtglossary command is specific to the glossaries-extra package, so for the second example, you'd have to use the more complicated methods that include the indexing and sorting functions.