The professors digitized 14 Christie novels (and included two more available in the Gutenberg online text archive), and then, with the aid of textual-analysis software, analyzed them for "vocabulary size and richness," an increase in repeated phrases (like "all sorts of") and an uptick in indefinite words ("anything," "something") — linguistic indicators of the cognitive deficits typical of Alzheimer's disease.
via nytimes.com
From The Ninth Annual Year in Ideas - Magazine - NYTimes.com, an indication of why verbal precision can be important. I've always been a fan of "indefinite words." My computer is full of files with "stuff" and "junk" in their names and my conversation is full of this kind of imprecision, too. Guess I better watch out.