Most of us are familiar with how GPS navigation works. You enter a precise address and the system gives you turn-by-turn real-time instructions on how to get there while hopefully calculating the fastest route to get there. It works because it's accurate, will get you to your destination without error every time and allows drivers to focus on the road instead of mentally calculating the best route or worse, looking at paper maps while driving, both enough of a distraction to make driving significantly more dangerous.
We would not tolerate a GPS that takes you close to your destination, but stops within 1km of your journey's end, leaving you to find the precise location on your own. Yet, that's precisely what's happening with the journalistic standards of online architecture and design publications that routinely post articles rife with errors, misinterpretations and sometimes even downright deception.
Take this piece on a recent project by a reputable local firm, described as a house in a suburban context. While it's technically true that the neighbourhood it is in was once a far suburb of the downtown core, that was 100 years ago and the locale has since long been absorbed within the growing city. It is now considered to be part of Old Toronto, a part of the city that is denser and more urban than any other part of the GTA.
While this is a minor infraction, it was committed by a supposedly serious publication, one serious enough to have a print version and be considered somewhat of a reference in the design world. Many times, it is much worse, the worst of all being publications that copy text verbatim from others and/or publish articles that are barely written in intelligible English.
I'm picking on this one to make a point, but this is so prevalent in the industry that I wonder if we'll eventually only get crappy publications, putting out crappy articles and the design journalism that is not very critical to begin with will just devolve into websites one browses only for the pretty pictures.
If you do any kind of work that is good enough to be taken seriously, run away from these fourth-rate blogs and demand from other "serious" publications a certain degree of accuracy when describing your work.
Clear language requires clear thinking and clear thinking is predicated on having clear ideas. These take time and effort to form, so don't let someone else bastardize your ideas in the name of expediency. Accurate language is a reflection of that thought process that leads you to painstakingly design that building you're trying so hard to get published.
I'll leave you with this quote from Nicolas Boileau, one of my favourite of all time: "Whatever we conceive well, we express clearly, and words flow with ease."
That means no more archispeak.