This template formats a single linguistic glossing abbreviation (a grammatical category label). For example, {{gcl|CONT}} produces: CONT. Hovering the mouse over the abbreviation displays a tooltip with its meaning, which in this case is "continuous aspect". To specify a meaning different from the default one, pass it as a second parameter after the abbreviation itself: {{gcl|CONT|continuative}} gives: CONT.

The abbreviation will be rendered as a link to the relevant article if the |glossing= parameter is set to wikilink, thus {{gcl|CLF|glossing=wikilink}} gives: CLF. The wikipedia article is specified by the third parameter: {{gcl|CLF|classifier|Chinese classifier}} gives: CLF. The presence of this third parameter (even if empty) will force the abbreviation to be displayed as a wikilink – {{gcl|CLF||}} is equivalent to {{gcl|CLF|glossing=wikilink}}.

This template is mainly used within {{interlinear}}. It will exempt its content from the default glossing behaviour in the interlinear text. This can be needed in several circumstances:

• to set the meaning of an abbreviation that is otherwise not recognised;
• to use an abbreviation with a meaning different from the default one, or linking to a different article from the default one;
• to apply formatting to a portion of a glossing abbreviation (within {{interlinear}} this would prevent the abbreviation from being recognised);
• to exempt an abbreviation from the default {{interlinear}} formatting. To this end, two further values of the |glossing= parameter can be used: |glossing=no link will force the use of the default formatting as an abbreviation with a tooltip, without turning it into a wikilink; |glossing=no abbr will only format the label in small caps without treating it as an abbreviation. Additional CSS styles can be set using the |style= parameter.

To prevent a string from being treated as a glossing label at all, use {{no gloss}}.