Tony, I understand your point about going overboard with nitpicking at semantics...and agree with you, to a point.

Wouldn't the best option be, whenever possible, to ask the person for a clarification? Say to them some variation of, "I'm not trying to put words in your mouth -- but here's what I'm hearing from you...please correct me if I'm wrong..."

On the other hand, I agree with a lot of what Rex has been saying about the precision of language. Imprecise language is usually reflective of at least SOME degree of sentiments underlying the speaker's words. The real question is deciphering -- to WHAT EXTENT is that relevant, when trying to understand the speaker's intent?