Now this puts me in the awkward position of having to disagree (but just a bit) with someone who has vastly more knowledge and experience than me, and who's opinion I value. But firstly I agree totally with the 'record what you see' part. That is an imperative. But, when presented with a feature that displays all the physical characteristics of what the average person understands to be a ditch, I don't see a problem with calling it a ditch. Because the word doesn't, or at least shouldn't, do anything other than describe the feature's characteristics. It isn't a value-word, in that it doesn't imply any kind of function or intent. Now you may be lucky enough that there is sufficient evidence relating to this ditch to say that it's 'possibly' this, or 'probably' that, but calling it a ditch in itself doesn't imply that it was dug to please the gods, because the digger had just split up from his girlfriend/manager/goat and needed to expend some energy, or that they needed to stop the privy flooding when it rained. Further, I worry that using such couched words as 'linear feature' or whatever may even cloud the issue to a future reader, where conventions may have changed. I'm very much in favour of keeping the language as simple and basic as possible to avoid any future ambiguity, unless someone can convince me otherwise of course...
Edited to add: This is in reply to BAJR, as I didn't spot the later comments until after posting. It's been a long day... (battling with a DITCH!) }
Edited to add: This is in reply to BAJR, as I didn't spot the later comments until after posting. It's been a long day... (battling with a DITCH!) }