To use or not to use the term "WYSIWIG"?

Subject: To use or not to use the term "WYSIWIG"?
From: adf1972 -at- yahoo -dot- com
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 09:38:50 -0700


I'm getting flack from a QA person here for using the acronym "WYSIWIG"
(i.e., "what you see is what you get") in a manual draft. He dislikes that
it's so slang-y sounding.

Well, I agree that "WYSIWIG" sounds a bit on the slangy side, but it is
(or was) a common, accepted technical term and has been in use for a long
time. I checked both www.pcwebopaedia.com and www.whatis.com, and it's
listed in both places. If I'm remembering correctly back to my Lotus 1-2-3
days, that software application even called one of its GUI screens "the
WYSIWIG". It seems to me that some other common techno terms, such as
"blog", are on the slang-y side, but newspapers and magazines still use
them.

I chose to include the term in the manual because it conveys in just one
word the concept I'm trying to get across -- that the way the thing looks
when it prints is pretty much the way it looks on the screen. Yeah, I
included the longer verbal explanation as well. But as I said, to those
"in the know", the acronym works as an immediately understood one-word
explanation for the concept.

What do you all think? Is it too casual and jargony a term to use in a
technical manual?

Adrienne

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