Choosing words to clearly describe data

There's a classic example of this with the way the National Weather Service provides forecasts of the likelihood of severe storms.

Put the following into increasing order of likelihood: High, Slight, Moderate, Enhanced, Marginal

When surveyed, members of the general public most commonly sorted them: Slight, Marginal, Moderate, Enhanced, High.

Whereas the NWS intends: Marginal, Slight, Enhanced, Moderate, High.

The WaPo has an article about it from a few weeks ago.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/06/10/storm-pred...

> Berry also pointed out that if the word “common” is used to indicate a 1-10% chance of a nasty side effect (which is recommended usage in the EU for medication leaflets), but a patient thinks that “common” means a 50% chance (which is how many of Berry’s subjects interpreted the word), then the patient might refuse to take the medication because of this misunderstanding.

1-10% chance of a nasty side-effect is high. So yeah, I'd say "common" is appropriate.

I read the title and thought this article might have more to do with my spending 10 minutes finding the perfect variable name.