View Single Post
Old June 25, 2012, 08:03 AM   #20
MLeake
Senior Member
 
Join Date: November 15, 2007
Location: Outside KC, MO
Posts: 10,128
In some cases, semantics or terminology have more bearing on meaning than in other cases.

For instance, if I'm flying a plane, and want to sound professional to my co-pilot (which makes quite a deal of difference in the confidence level of a co-pilot who has not flown with me), then calling for "Flaps down," which corresponds to the lever I want him to move, and the placarded position to which I want him to move it, sounds better than "lower the flap thingy."

To shooters, the difference between "magazine" and "clip" can have the same effect, if the wrong term is used. It grates; it sounds unprofessional. In some cases, it's not worth addressing, though - such as when sounding professional (or at least educated) has no real bearing on the question.

To me, this is one of those cases where semantics don't really matter. We all understood what the OP meant; many of us agree with his point.

Sometimes, pointing out semantics can be helpful. (I used the "thingy" example because that one actually was uttered by a Navy pilot I was flying with, who wanted to be taken more seriously by other officers in that squadron. I pointed out that proper terminology would help out quite a bit in that regard; the advice was taken, and turned out to be prophetic.) Other times, critiquing semantics is just snarky.
MLeake is offline  
 
Page generated in 0.03703 seconds with 8 queries