> Journalists and non-practitioners fight back and forth about words like this because they have no skin in the game
Actually I think that the real problem is with unscrupulous marketing from practitioners than with journalists and non-practitioners. When a word becomes a trend, everybody wants in, so the word is stretched so much that it loses its original usefulness.
Take cloud for example - what does it really mean today? Even the usual old VPS today is marketed as a "cloud" solution...
Cloud is a VPS plus a decently real-time API for provisioning and configuration, so I can treat servers as an abstract software component. Pre-cloud era VPSes often required humans in the loop for simple administrative tasks.
"Cloud" just means "outsourcing your infrastructure". Or, in some contexts, "I don't care how it works, as long as it does X, Y, and Z" (like the cloud in a network diagram).
Cloud has never had meaning. I always thought that fog was the much more appropriate weather event for the vague concept that all the different people tried to push.
My pet hate is 'impact'. There was a perfectly usable word before: affect. No-one uses it anymore, because everything has to have IMPACT! Not enough toilet paper in the loo today? How will that impact employee morale? Different brand batteries in your wireless keyboard? What IMPACT will that have on performance?
But sadly the horse has bolted on that one, its jig is up, and gone the way of the dodo... literally.
It depends on the specific case, since impact is used as both a noun and verb, while affect and effect in this sense are typically used as a verb and a noun respectively. In his two examples, one would be replaced with affect and one would be replaced with effect.
Actually I think that the real problem is with unscrupulous marketing from practitioners than with journalists and non-practitioners. When a word becomes a trend, everybody wants in, so the word is stretched so much that it loses its original usefulness.
Take cloud for example - what does it really mean today? Even the usual old VPS today is marketed as a "cloud" solution...