It is important to recognize the debt owed by the Scottish Country Dancing community to Charles Upton. Before his database became available, there was no consistent set of dance instructions for most of the dances regularly being performed. RSCDS publications were consistent in style but covered fewer than 1000 dances, many of which were of no more than historical interest. Availability of publications containing authoritative descriptions of even the most popular devisers' dances was haphazard in the extreme. The typical compiler of a dance programme usually had recourse only to dance cribs produced by other compilers for their own events; s/he then had either to reword these to be consistent in style or risk confusing the dancer with the inconsistencies. Unsurprisingly, errors could easily be promulgated. n x m, where n and m are numbers, means that the music for the dance consists of n Repeats, each of length m bars.

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When a deviser has given specific information concerning the dance name, as for example in Jean Attwood's Lady Sophia Lindsay, this is included. If not, some information relating to the title is supplied; this information should be considered to be our best guess at the deviser's intentions and should not be taken as definitive or authoritative. Word processors and the Worldwide Web have made the production of Dance cribs much more straightforward. In his MiniCrib, Charles Upton (and now his successors) provide descriptions with a consistent format for over 6000 dances which are eminently suitable as an aide-mémoire for a dancer at a more formal event. Rarely does one encounter a dance that is not included; until his well-earned retirement in December 2013, he welcomed details for inclusion in his regular update of the complete database as now do his successors.

means 1stCouple (but note that some compilers use 1C instead while some others use 1C to represent First corners); and We try to give enough detail in MaxiCribs so that the average dancer who has not previously met the dance can readily understand it and perform it at a Ball. We have also added Dance Notes to some dances where a more detailed explanation might be helpful to the dancer or teacher. These will be equally applicable to MiniCrib except in the few cases where MaxiCrib differs from MiniCrib; for example, bars 27-32 of The Wind on Loch Fyne and those dances with the original format, 3Couple repeat in a 4Couple set for which a version suitable for a 3Couple set is sometimes provided. The Steps required are usually understood implicitly from the Type of dance but, where necessary, the Step to be used is defined explicitly, for example, Set with Highland Schottische setting step.Glossaries and indexes are sometimes mixed up because they both come at the end of a work and are organized alphabetically by keyword. Despite their similarities, though, glossaries and indexes serve two different purposes. Thousands of definitions, offering clear explanations for learners, comprehensive coverage of British and American English for native speakers, and specialized definitions for a range of specific subject areas For Gaelic names, a translation and a guide to pronunciation is provided wherever possible; general detail on pronunciation is supplied in Gaelic Dance Names. A glossary is a section at the end of a written work that defines confusing, technical, or advanced words. You can think of a glossary as a mini-dictionary for words used in that work. Glossaries are commonly used in research papers and academic books to explain special words or jargon readers wouldn’t understand.