Rubric

WORD OF THE DAY

rubric / noun / ROO-brik 
 
Definition
1: an authoritative rule; especially : a rule for conduct of a liturgical service
2a: heading, title; also
2b: class, category
3a: an explanatory or introductory commentary
3b: gloss
3c: an editorial interpolation
4: an established rule, tradition, or custom
5: a guide listing specific criteria for grading or scoring academic papers, projects, or tests

Examples

"… Katharine Briggs (1875-1968) and her daughter, Isabel Myers (1897-1980), … devised a rubric that identified personality according to four 'easy to understand and easily relatable' categories: extravert or introvert, thinking or feeling, sensing or intuiting, judging or perceiving."
— Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2018

"The whole rubric of employer-employee relations is undergoing a transformation—and the approach of treating employees as mere units in an assembly line is fast becoming outdated. In today's context, the extent of a company's employee engagement does play a role in a professional's decision to join it."
— Avik Chanda, quoted in Business World, 27 Apr. 2018

Did You Know?
Centuries ago, whenever manuscript writers inserted special instructions or explanations into a book, they put them in red ink to set them off from the black used in the main text. (They used the same practice to highlight saints' names and holy days in calendars, a practice which gave us the term red-letter day.) 

Ultimately, such special headings or comments came to be called rubrics, a term that traces back to ruber, the Latin word for "red." While the printing sense remains in use today, rubric also has an extended sense referring to any class or category under which something is organized.