Definition lists

When you write Splunk documentation, use a definition list to define a set of terms, descriptions, explanations, or associations.

Qualities of definition lists

Definition lists must have the following qualities:

• A complete lead-in sentence
• More than 1 defined term
• 2 levels: the term, which is in bold and on its own line, and the definition, which is at least 1 full sentence indented on its own line
• Parallel sentence construction
• Sentence case capitalizationn
• 1 idea for each list
• End punctuation for every definition line

You can add a paragraph break after each definition if the formatting is tight. If you need to use multiple definition lists or organize more content, you might find that a table works better for this purpose. See Best practices for including tables.

For more guidance on using lists, see Best practices for writing with lists.

Example

The following example of a definition list contains a complete lead-in sentence. Each item in the list uses parallel construction and complete sentences.

You can run the following types of searches with the Splunk platform:

Raw event search

A raw event search retrieves events from an index and is typically used to analyze a problem, such as checking error codes, correlating events, investigating security issues, and analyzing failures.

Transforming search

A transforming search performs a statistical calculation against a set of results. For example, you can get a daily count of error events, count the login attempts from a user, or calculate the 95th percentile of field values.