# Domain and Subject on a glossary term

**Category:** [Standards & Brand Hub](https://help.totalctrl.app/hc/totalctrl/totalctrl-help-center/en-US/categories/standards)
**Updated:** 2026-10-04

## Domain is a list now

**Domain** was a text box. A text box that things get filtered by reliably produces `Legal`, `legal` and `Leagl` in one workspace, and a filter built on that can only ever be approximately right — it looks like it works, and it quietly omits rows.

It is a picker over a list your workspace maintains, at **Standards & Brand Hub → Glossary Domains**. Five are there to begin with — Technical, Legal, Marketing, Product and Brand — and you can add your own, rename them, reorder them, and retire ones you do not use.

## What the page shows you

Each domain lists how many glossary terms are filed under it, because retiring an empty domain and retiring one holding forty terms are not the same decision and the button should not look the same.

The order you arrange is the order of the picker on a glossary term.

## Retiring and renaming

- **Retiring** stops a domain being offered on new terms. It does not touch terms already filed under it — those keep their domain and still filter correctly. Add the same name again later and the retired one comes back rather than being refused as a duplicate.

- **Renaming** changes only the label. The stored value stays as it was, so every term filed under it stays where it is. "Legal" can become "Legal & Compliance" without orphaning anything.

## Anything you already typed is kept

Whatever was in the old free-text field became a real domain the first time this list was used. Nothing that was in use before the change disappeared from the picker.

## Subject Area stays free text

This is deliberate, and it is the same question answered the other way. A **domain** is a small closed set that terms get grouped and filtered by. A **subject** is a note about one particular term — closer to prose than to a category — and making it a controlled list would mean maintaining a taxonomy before anybody can save a word.

The test is whether you would ever filter by it. You filter by domain. You read a subject.

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## Related Articles

- [Brand Portals: a public home for your brand](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/brand-portal)
- [App Settings: assign a package to each app](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/standards-app-settings)
- [Brand Voice: your workspace's verbal identity](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/brand-voice)
- [Create your first Standards Package](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/create-a-standards-package)
- [Build a tone profile](https://help.totalctrl.app/en-US/articles/build-a-tone-profile)

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