A few months ago, I found myself in a conversation with other editors about a description that was given to a particular type of chair, asking whether people would actually know what a writer was referring to if they just used the name of the chair. There was a photo posted with the original post of some rusted chair that glided back and forth. You should have seen the comments that went back and forth about locality and age of editors. It was mad. Then I piped in, looking at the sample writing that was provided in the original post and the clunky description that was given to the chair.
In my comments, I provided a potential rework to the passage to smooth out the sentence flow and highlight the significance of the chair itself, but in my rework I had changed the name of the chair from glider to rocker. OMG, I was lynched, because apparently there is a big difference between a glider and a rocker.
My response to the lynch mob: Who cares what the chair is actually called? What matters is why the character is noticing it in the first place. (I think I actually wrote that on the forums too.) What is the significance of this chair, whatever it was called, to the plot?
