system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is it okay to create and name my own principles in my philosophy paper?

I was assigned a philosophy essay with a very traditional prompt. It's pretty open ended and has to be less than 2000 words. I kind of got carried away, becoming passionate about the question and I wrote what I think is a stellar paper. It's still less than 2k words, ready to be submitted, but I just feel like I was too pompous in a particular area. That's because I became proud of a main argument in my paper, so much so that I gave it a name like this: "Principle of *\[blank\]*". I even made an abbreviation for it so could reference it multiple times in my paper. I just feel like as an undergraduate student and someone who isn't even a philosophy major, I do not really have a place in putting that kind of material in the paper. Does anyone agree/disagree with this?

Part of the reason I have all this doubt is because it seems rather similar to what Peter Singer wrote in one of his books. He revolutionized the "Principle of Equal Consideration" of equal interests (PEC) and referenced it all throughout *Practical Ethics*. I can see that Singer absolutely has the privileges of doing this in his great book, but not me with this measly 5-page paper.
gpt
This strikes me as a pretty tiny concern. Is the principle meaningfully defined?  Does it avoid being unnecessarily duplicative of something in a source you were supposed to use?  Is your use of it justified in the paper?  Does it help you answer the assignment?  Worry about the terms of the assignment, not some little technical move.

Instructor sensibilities differ, but this would not phase me at all.