okay, I think I understand the difference, thank you for the clarification guys. And Michael, I would love to see a picture to better grasp your description, but I can picture it.
Tubedude and Rushfan... my wife and I "dabbed" our 10'x12' kitchen ceiling in about 2 hours... using ordinary paint trays attached to ladders, we laid these somewhat stiff brushes on their side into the oil-based pain, flipped over, and went dab-dab-dab-dab.
We painted the entire ceiling with "killz" primer beforehand. This wasn't done because we really wanted a textured ceiling, but rather the plaster ceiling had a few cracks which i patched, and unfortunately they didn't come out that good so we tried to hide it with the dabbing method.
I'm sure we could have used a roller of some kind, but we had the brushes and the trays, and just went at it.