WYSIWYG is an acronym: 'What you see is what you get.'
It's of fairly recent origin, perhaps circa 1987-88,
and as such1 it pertains to
computer use; specifically, viewing items on a screen.
It's pronounced 'whizzy-wig.'
Believe it or not, at around that time during the late '80s, what one saw on a computer screen
and what one printed out onto paper were radically
different. My, how times change.
Who actually first worked on this project is difficult
to fathom. Over a period of time several computer
programmers and enthusiasts were frustrated that
what appeared on a computer monitor and how it printed out were completely different.
Eventually after nearly infinite computer
routines were compiled, some particularly mad and
caffeinated computer enthusiasts put together a way
that allowed users to output onto paper text and
images exactly as they appeared on the screen. This
eliminated all the tedious spellchecking and
copyediting that traditionally went along with
producing printed material, and so the phrase 'What you
see [on the computer screen] is what you get [on
paper]' was born.
Because humans were swamped with such poorly edited
copy, this gave rise to a myriad of spellchecking and
grammar checking applications, programs that lined up
your text just right, code that drew straight lines,
and other time-saving routines that generally
destroyed an entire industry of graphic artists and
fontographers overnight. However, while these
applications were striving for the perfect WYSIWYG,
inaccuracies generally upset a large number of users
expecting exactness and perfection in their documents.
This gave birth to yet two new acronyms:
-
The first, WYSISBNRMOLWYG ('What You See Is Somewhat,
But Not Really, More Or Less, What You Get'), is used
mainly by programmers attempting to justify shoddy
code written at three in the morning before the
deadline.
-
WYSIAG, is typically used by printhouses
having to reformat and re-edit incoming documents
before they're printed in mass quantities:
'What You See Is A Gorilla.'
1 Being an acronym so young.
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