I want to make a list and explain some of the preconceived ideas about exploratory testing that come mostly from people who heard little or not at all about the term. I used the discussion from a context-driven testing forum, especially James Bach comments.

• Exploratory testing is synonym with manual testing. This is not true because you can use any tool you decide helpful to accomplish your mission, including scripting. Its the same thing as saying that driving is a manual task. You use your head when driving (not all the time maybe or not in all situations but those are exceptions).
• Exploratory testing is called sometimes ad-hoc testing. Ad-hoc is part of ET but not the definition of it. With ET you seek continuously to improve your tests each time. If you go on a trip and visit a lot of stuff, that is close to ET. Having a quick look in a museum is ad-hoc.
• Exploratory testing is a technique. Well ET is not a technique in itself. It might contain a set of different techniques but its more like an approach. Breaking a wall is an approach to make more space in your house for example, but you can use different ways to tear it down.
• Exploratory testing is never planned. This is not necessarily true. You can plan it to some extent. You can plan to split an application to different areas. Then you decide to reorder different because of the new finding done with ET.
• Exploratory testing is not documented. There are examples on how to document ET. One of those is Session-Based Management that can contain data of the tests that have been performed. You can report the path that lead you finding a bug (not referring to steps to reproduce). You can report tools used, knowledge used ( SMPT protocol)
• Exploratory testing is never used in combination with scripting. ET and scripting are opposite approaches but can be mixed. You can create a script to get more data and arrange it so you can find a possible pattern.

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