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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/6435
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The bulk of my writing consists of technical papers, reports, notes, and memos. Because of the mathematical nature of my work I spend a lot of time writing definitions, and it is very important that I define terminology in the right order.

I generally write from an outline, but often my first draft of an outline has a lot of flaws of a particular type. The type of flaw is where the outline talks about some topic or terminology before it has been defined. In my first revision of the outline, I would like to try an indicate the dependencies of a particular item. How can I clearly denote some of these dependencies in my outline without making the outline cluttered?

For example,

> 1. Describe problem.
> 2. Define parameters and decision variables. 
> - Cost function
> - Time function
> - Probability distributions ...

In this case, suppose that the time and cost functions both depend on the probability distribution, what is an effective way to indicate that, in a way integral to the outline?

Original score: 3