It appears that the terms "complex" and "sequence" are used synonymously in homological algebra.
But there seem to be collocations (in the linguistic sense) that prefer one of those words. For example, one usually uses
- "short exact sequences" but not "short exact complexes"
- "simplicial complex" but not "simplicial sequence"
- "double complex" but not "double sequence"
Is there any hidden principle when to use which word, or is it perfectly fine in a scientific publication to stick to the common collocations, and decide by gut feeling in all other cases?