Fleet carriers and cruiser carriers

How should smaller interwar carriers be described when CVL-style labels do not fit the period?

He warns against imposing later US labels and suggests the Royal Navy would think in fleet-carrier and cruiser-carrier or trade-protection-carrier roles.

Vocabulary can distort naval design analysis. A US-style light-carrier label carries fleet-carrier assumptions that may not match Royal Navy thinking. Britain might understand a smaller carrier as a trade-protection or cruiser carrier, with its design shaped by cruiser-like missions rather than the American CVL concept. Alternate history should begin at the divergence and reason forward in the period's own language rather than importing categories created later. The terminology is evidence about how a navy understood the ship's job, not merely a convenient modern label.