(06-10-2024, 01:51 PM)LisaFaginDavis wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's not a question of "ivory tower" vs "popular". It's "accuracy" vs. "inaccuracy." It's misleading to use terminology that is simply wrong. If you don't know the correct term for something, look it up! In any kind of scholarship, regardless of the audience, it is quite possible to both avoid pretension and use accurate descriptive terms.
Ok.. sure. But has anyone claimed his use of the term 'paper' was accurate? Technically, it isn't. It's just that it remains an irrelevant faux pas on Williams' part, having nothing to do with his evidence (or lack thereof) for his forgery thesis. In fact, it appears to be an intentional simplification, given that he qualified it by saying "calfskin paper". So he obviously knows it was calfskin. And he obviously knows it was not a pulp-based paper, wood, cotton, or otherwise. So in what way, having any importance at all, is it "misleading"? If a 5-year old asked "what is vellum?", a teacher or parent might well answer "It's paper made out of calfskin." Would that be "misleading"? Perhaps. If one's aim is to find flaw in the teacher. But most people (at least, outside the ivory tower) would accept that it is intended as a helpful simplification for a particular audience. They would not use it to suggest the teacher is therefore wrong about some different topic.