Key answer
Supply definitions with custom names and full names with abbreviations; explain distinctions between easily confused terms. “Use our previous terminology” does not supply definitions absent from the current context.
Full explanation
WinoDict tested contextual understanding of unfamiliar words with GPT-3 and PaLM. Definitions helped but performance remained below that for familiar words; giving familiar words new meanings could also suffer interference from their old meanings. Check for conflicts rather than assuming a new abbreviation is immediately mastered. Paper
Maintain a short glossary with four elements: primary name, meaning, acceptable aliases and similar terms that must remain distinct. For example:
“Complete”: the text passed review and links passed checking; a finished first draft does not qualify. “Draft”: text exists but has not passed those checks. “Completion rate”: completed items divided by planned items in this round. Use these names in outputs; determine whether different labels in source material refer to the same thing.
For prompts processing several documents, put this in a separate terminology section rather than mixing it into the material being analyzed. Separating instructions, background and materials also follows Anthropic's structural guidance. Official guide
When a definition changes, state that the old one is obsolete. If only the name changes, say the meaning remains unchanged. This organization aids execution and checking; no universal experimental improvement percentage is established.
References
1. Eisenschlos et al. (2023), WinoDict: Probing language models for in-context word acquisition, EACL