Were this an actual conversation where someone wants to start with emacs, I would be showing the sequences (as in "see, Ctrl-x and Ctrl-f gives you a prompt to write a file. Now try Ctrl-x and Ctrl-s...") and I would show the part of emacs that gives the user feedback about the command.
Discussions about terminology are totally secondary, and honestly, I was just trying to find a polite way to show that I don't want to get into an argument about terminology.
