Define terms

You define terms for the entire enterprise to ensure clarity and compatibility among departments, projects, or products. Follow guidelines to help ensure that you create clear and meaningful terms.

Here are some tips about creating terms:

If the term name is long, use spaces instead of underscores or hyphens to break up the name. Otherwise, when long term names are displayed in results tables, the name does not wrap and the adjacent columns are narrow. For example, instead of "Northeast_Office_Billing_Address", use "Northeast Office Billing Address".
Define terms according to the standards accepted by the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission (InterISO/IEC 11179–4):
- Write term names in the singular form
- State descriptions as a phrase or with a few sentences
- Express descriptions without embedded concepts and without definitions of other terms
- State what the concept of a term is rather than just what it is not
- Use only commonly understood abbreviations in descriptions
In addition, according to ISO/IEC 11179–4, term descriptions should:
- State the essential meaning of the concept
- Be precise, unambiguous, and concise
- Be able to stand alone
- Be expressed without embedded rationale, functional usage, or procedural information
- Avoid definitions that use other term definitions
- Use the same terminology and consistent logical structure for related definitions
- Be appropriate for the type of metadata item that is being defined

If departments, projects, or product lines have different meanings for the same term, review all definitions together and have subject matter experts arrive at a common definition. If a common definition is not possible, create several terms from the single term and identify the context for the term in the term name.

Terms can have the same name only if they are in different categories. In this scenario, the category that contains the term gives you added information about the term.

For example, the term Address might mean "Shipping Address" to Distribution, "Bill To Address" to Accounting, and "Contact Address" to Sales. You might define these in either of the following ways:

Create a single category with different terms
In the same category, create terms "Shipping Address", "Bill To Address", and "Contact Address". In the Short Description and Long Description fields of each term, give a definition that is specific to the relevant department.

This method lets you create terms that have a unique definition.
Create separate categories where each category contains a term with the same name
In the Distribution, Accounting, and Sales categories, create the term Address. Each term is contained by a different category, which indicates that the term definition is specific to each department.

This method combines several term definitions into a single definition. To understand the meaning of a term, you must look at the category that contains it.

Also, when developing term names, be familiar with how users will find and display terms with the business glossary tools. For example, terms such as "Billing Account Number" and "Account Number" will both be displayed high up in the search results for the string "Account Number." Knowledge of how users will access the terms will help you determine when you should add qualifying words to term names and when you might want to include more than one explanation in term descriptions.