Are you particular about words?
I am very particular. I know this.
However, there are a few valid reasons for this. I’ve certainly had plenty of miscommunication in my life, and the only thing to do in the face of this is to keep struggling to clarify.
For instance, at work we had a bit of a summit the other day, where I volunteered to research a video indexing system, ’cause we’re in this weird place where we use a million video formats and nothing seems to work with all of them.
However, when it made its way to the formal list, it says develop an indexing system.
You programmers out there can sense me twitching at the difference here – one says that I’ll be looking into software other people have created, and the other says that I will fashion with these two hands a mighty videoslaying sword that will cleave our beast into neat categories.
I’m not a programmer, though, and the person who did it isn’t either, so I’m learning to let that lie this time. However, this is how inaccurate words can wreck you – if, two months down the road, someone else sees this list and thinks I should be coding instead of applying someone else’s code, I’ve put myself in hot water by not speaking out.
What situations have you been in where imprecise words made you twitch?
I am always hoping for people to be more specific. If I have to translate what they mean, then woes begin.
Here’s a good example. When I work shows, people often pick things up and say, “What is it?” about a particular item.
I have found out that they mean one of four things:
*How much is it
*Where is it from
*What is it made of
*What do you do with it
So I *always* wish that people would be more specific. In nearly all ways. I have a brain that does not grasp the Immediate Obvious, and often wanders on the backroads, and I need the details in order to approach things from the right angle.
I want to kill people when they say “literally” and don’t mean “literally”. There IS NO OTHER WORD WITH THAT MEANING! Angry Randy is Angry!