> 1) I'm absolutely certain "free" and "taxpayer funded" would result in two very different impressions. Maybe, but that's a false dichotomy, anyway. It's "tax

> 1) I'm absolutely certain "free" and "taxpayer funded" would result in two very different impressions. Maybe, but that's a false dichotomy, anyway. It's "taxpayer funded" either way. You'd have to say "fully tapayer funded" to be accurate, and then the difference in impression may have nothing to do with the content of the message but the tedious verbosity of the form. It certainly would for me, and I'd smell an agenda on the part of the person using those words in, say, a headline. > As subtle as it is, the use of "free" is vague, lacks transparency, and in most cases misleading. Again, maybe you're right, but, without even basic psychology research showing that's the case with that word, by intuition says it's not misleading for most cases. > Why don't we get better language? Better communication? A combination of there being no incentive (or incentives to the contrary), or we just don't want it. Headlines are especially notorious for having something like the opposite of "better language". Ultimately, who are you to say what's better? Language is usage is language.