Where to Define Nomenclature in a Proposal or Dissertation?

If you have been given to written assignment by your teacher, you must have heard about nomenclature and how it should be used in a proposal or dissertation. If you do not know what it is, you must know that it is a system of words used to name things in a particular discipline. It would not be wrong to call it a language for using particular words.

 

When working on their dissertation writing assignment, the biggest problem that students face is where to define nomenclature in their paper. They are not clear if they should use it in their proposal or the dissertation and which place would be the best in this regard. When we talk about nomenclature, it is necessary to first consider how often the term or the symbol is used.

If it is used frequently or many times, then it is important that it gets a clear definition at the beginning of the paper where it is explained properly so that the readers know what it is all about and in which context it is being used in the paper. It is because if the readers do not know in which context or reference it is being used, they will not be able to make sense of the either proposal or the dissertation and end up being confused.  in addition to this, it would be a waste of time as well as efforts if you keep on defining it every time you use it so it is best that if you think you will be using nomenclature a number of times, you provide its meaning in the beginning where readers can get what you are talking about and enjoy going through the paper.

However, in the cases, where things are used just once, it might be more apt to define it at the point of use so that the explanation is incorporated in the text and it makes more sense to the readers. It is important to remember that at this point, the definition is only relevant for that little portion of text so it is best to make use of it then and there to keep things in the normal mode. Whether it is the proposal or the dissertation, it will work well in both these cases.

If you think that you will be using nomenclature in more than one places but it would not be too much, you can also provide an insight to it at the dissertation end in the referenceor the appendix section if you feel it would be find to do so. However, this often applies to cases where the readers know most of the definitions and only need a mere consultation and not full-fledged definition. It is more a matter of preference and giving your dissertation a more readable feel because you will not want to confuse the readers and create misunderstanding when they do not get what you are talking about in the paper.

You can decide if you want to define nomenclature in a proposal or dissertation according to your content and the readership you are targeting.