Background: Why is terminology important?
Someone once told me -- possibly a math professor -- that what separates the amateurs from the professionals is that the professionals in a field use correct, accurate terminology. This allows other people in the field to cross geographic, regional, and corporate boundaries; and communicate in a common, technical language.
Additionally, I consider myself a moderate-expert in the field, and I'm someone relatively senior in our organization from a technology perspective. Therefore, I feel it is the responsibility of any such person to mentor others, lead by example, and ensure we collectively put our best foot forward.
What's more, if it were simply grammar, I'd only make noise about it for published material. But in this case, there is a remote chance it could cause communication issues, both in communication artifacts, as well as verbally.
An example scenario:
When people use some terminology incorrectly, I do feel it is important to correct it. As an example, someone in my field used the name of a browser engine developed by Apple interchangeably with an application runtime sponsored by Intel, and now it's catching on in other areas outside my field. For instance, I've heard at least one person in, let's say, marketing, who is now using that term incorrectly. While the product sponsored by Intel uses some of the same technology as the product built by Apple, what one can do with these two technologies is vastly different. In short, they are not remotely the same.
The name of the Intel-sponsored product contains a portion of the name of the Apple product. Think "Foo" as the Apple product and "Foo-Bar" as the name of the Intel-sponsored product.
Someone started calling the Foo-Bar platform "Foo", and this is starting to catch on. I feel it's my responsibility to correct this, but I also feel like this can come off as arrogant. This is a fairly flat organization without a massive hierarchy, and all of the people involved are essentially coworkers.
How can I correct people's use of the terminology without sounding arrogant? Would the approach change if the incorrect terminology were more widespread?