28 Feb 2026 Search

Some unclear or misleading language that I try to avoid on here.

alpha: See Greek letters to identify types of people.

answered: Avoid using conversational terms for generative AI interactions. Use more neutral language such as “output.”

art: Do not use for generative AI output. Use the general file type such as “image.”

beta: See Greek letters to identify types of people.

community: In software company writing, this means either people who will do work for my company for free or people who will pick up after me after I move fast and break things. Use a more specific word.

digital assets: This basically means shitcoins when someone is trying to convince the government to allow them in tax-advantaged retirement accounts.

energy security: Often used to mean dependency on fossil fuels, which is counterproductive because depending on facilities that are impractical to move, impossible to conceal, and full of explosive stuff is the opposite of security.

free market, the: Markets are designed. The state of nature is not a market (and it’s also not TCP/IP, or one of the line dances from Pride and Prejudice, or the Chuck E. Cheese ticket redemption rules). I’m surprised more market designers aren’t mad about the expression the free market. That’s like a board game designer showing up at game night and everyone talking about how the free Catan naturally emerged.

generative AI images: This is not just a political thing or a way to identify with a movement. Using AI slop to illustrate a blog post makes it less trustworthy. More: /ai

greek letters to identify types of people: This is a racket.

industry-wide problem: Something bad that our company does that we don’t want to fix. (For example, there is an adtech firm called The Trade Desk that is getting to be well-known for staying out of the worst of the web ads ran on WHAT? stories, but the others are remarkably uninterested in fixing their stuff. We as an industry must work together to… is adtech-speak for A hard problem that I don’t want to work on is… More: The Bakery Desk)

innovation: This generally means any invention that makes things worse. People whose inventions make things better can generally lead with the benefit. For example, cryptocurrency doesn’t have enough legit applications to justify the fraud risks and environmental impact, but there’s always something new. Another good example is surveillance advertising. When a privacy bill with private right of action would make the residents of a state better off, often the best that surveilance proponents can come up with is CCIA Raises Concerns With New Mexico Privacy Bill That Departs From National Standards and Risks Digital Innovation - CCIA advertising personalization: good for you?

intellectual property: In legal contexts this term has a real meaning, but in other contexts it is often used to mean some kind of hypothetical general right to not be competed with. Use a more specific term except in a direct quote.

merit-based: This is an unclear way to describe a process for selecting people for a job or education program. It usually means based on some test that I did well on. Clarify the actual selection criteria.

semicolons: Necessary for some programming languages, and sometimes useful in fiction. In most writing, though, a semicolon means either (1) this sentence should be split into two or (2) you need to come up with the right conjunction to join the two halves of the sentence; don’t semicolon them together and make the reader figure out how they relate.

tweet: Generic term for a short Internet text posting. Can be a noun (did you see that tweet on Threads?) or a verb (they just tweeted it on Mastodon). See “I Tweeted on Facebook Today:” Re-Evaluating Trademark Genericide of Internet-Based Trademarks by Scott Brown—even if “tweet” wasn’t generic in 2011, it is now.

very: Omit the “very,” rewrite to include more info on how much, or upgrade the adjective the “very” applies to.