Archive vs Distribution fuzzy

I feel the discussion in is quite confusing about Source Distributions and Source Archives. They are clearly treated as separate, with a Source Archive coming "prior to creation of a Source Distribution" in the glossary, but the output of build --sdist is a "Source Archive" and everything below is called an archive, with "You should always upload a source archive and provide built archives for the platforms your project is compatible with.".

Is this making a false distinction between a distribution and an archive? All tools (python -m build --sdist and python setup.py sdist) make a source distribution which is in an archive format, and the only non-distributable archive I know of is the one GitHub tends to make from tags, which is not something that needs discussion here.

Originally posted by @henryiii in https://github.com/pypa/packaging.python.org/pull/868#discussion_r604170979

Start with the glossary definition of “Source Archive” and the sections describing build --sdist, source distributions, and built archives. Trace how these terms are used across the documentation, then resolve whether the distinction is intentional and make the terminology consistent; done means the glossary and affected guidance no longer contradict each other.