Gould: Oracle to Red Hat: It's Not Your Father's Linux Market Anymore

A lot of miscommunication comes down to a too-clever choice in defining of abstract terms for your own purposes, instead of showing restraint and using words with plain meaning as your target audience would use them.

Many such regrettable mismatches between an author's definition and the readership definition can be accounted for when an author is using what would be considered field-specific terminology when attempting to write for a layreadership and causes inadvertent confusion. That is regrettable but certainly understandable.

It's however a completely different situation when an author makes up a definition on the spot that is not actually already in common usage colloquially and justifies it as a common layperson usage of the term. Such forcible re-definition is abhorrent when the goal is clear communication of any fact or opinion. Such activity is prevalent when the end goal is not communication but agenda specific efforts to manipulate readership ( akin to push polling) and is something that can raise an eyebrow or two to people sensitive to manipulative efforts posing as editorial commentary.

-jef