> My experience is that being overly precise in my speech can be off-putting to people. Enough so, that when I have encouraged feedback, both positive and negative, on my communication skills it came up more than once as "making you seem like you are showing off how much you know about something and making others feel dumb."

File this under 'know your audience'. On HN (and other nerdy and text-based communication) precision is often much more welcome than in oral communication in real life. Even with the same sort of people.