In this third post of a four-part series about crafting great business Great Business Crafting Great definitions ? I will explore how to make definitions precise. Surprisingly ? the very first word in the definition is key to keeping it on target. Beyond that ? I will explain how to express fine distinctions between closely related concepts. Read Part One and Part Two here.
A critical guideline for defining noun concepts is: The first significant Crafting Great word in the definition (i.e. ? not counting any article such as an) should also be a noun. Here is a faulty definition in that regard:
Cost: indicates what is to be paid
The essence of a noun concept is never that it does something. The buy telemarketing data essence is that the thing is something. And that something must be a noun thing. So ? remove the verb:
Cost: what is to be paid
The word what is a little better ? but just barely. It’s quite indistinct. So ? replace what with some definitive noun:
Cost: a price to be paid
Now you have an equivalence in the term being defined and the word that anchors the definition. That’s a fundamental correlation. We call the all-important first significant word (or word phrase) in a definition the kick-off word.
The kick-off word of a
Definition should generally designate a more general concept than the term being defined. Example:
Umpire: a league representative responsible can germany cell number open for the conduct of games and for order on the playing field
This definition indicates that league representative is a broader concept than umpire — in other words ? that umpires are a special case of league representatives. This critical kind of relation between broader and narrower concepts is called categorization.
