WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG

See also: Wysiwyg

English

Alternative forms

• Wysiwyg
• wysiwyg

Etymology

Coined by John Seybold and popularized at Xerox PARC during the late 1970s.[1]

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈwɪz.iˌwɪɡ/, /ˈwɪz.ə.wɪɡ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Phrase

WYSIWYG

1. Acronym of what you see is what you get.

Noun

WYSIWYG (plural WYSIWYGs)

1. (computing) Software that allows editing on screen what the printed version would be like; software with a what-you-see-is-what-you-get display interface.
   • 2003, James H. Pence, How to Do Everything with HTML & XHTML, page 132:

     WYSIWYGs are helpful tools in that they enable you to create pages much more quickly

Translations

computer program that allows editing on screen what the printed version would be like

Chinese: Mandarin: 所見即所得／所见即所得 (zh) (suǒjiàn jí suǒdé) Finnish: WYSIWYG German: WYSIWYG (de), wirklichkeitsgetreue Darstellung auf dem Bildschirm Hebrew: מה שאתה רואה זה מה שאתה מקבל‎ (informal; there is no formal translation) Hungarian: WYSIWYG (hu) Portuguese: o que você vê é o que você tem Romanian: ceea ce vezi e ceea ce vei obține Russian: что ви́дишь, то и полу́чишь (što vídišʹ, to i polúčišʹ), WYSIWYG (ru) Turkish: ne görüyorsan onu alırsın (informal; there is no formal translation), WYSIWYG (tr)

Derived terms

• WYSIATI
• WYSIWYM

References

1. John Markoff (2004-03-16), “John W. Seybold, 88, Innovator in Printing”, in The New York Times‎, ISSN 0362-4331: “It was Mr. Seybold, according to his son Andrew, who first used what you see is what you get in reference to computerized word processing, after watching The Flip Wilson Show on which Mr. Wilson used the phrase to describe his female character Geraldine.”

Further reading

• WYSIWYG on Wikipedia.Wikipedia