WYSIWYG

[ wiz-ee-wig ]

adjective

1. of, relating to, or noting a screen display that shows text exactly as it will appear in printed output, including underlining, various typefaces, as italics, line spacing, end-of-line breaks, and paragraph indentations.

noun

1. a WYSIWYG display:

   This program won't give you true WYSIWYG, but it does show boldface text and underlining.

WYSIWYG

/ ˈwɪzɪˌwɪɡ /

acronym for

1. what you see is what you get: referring to what is displayed on the screen being the same as what will be printed out

WYSIWYG

/ wĭz′ē-wĭg′ /

1. Short for what you see is what you get. A word-processing or desktop publishing system in which text is displayed on a monitor exactly as it will be printed.

Word History and Origins

Origin of WYSIWYG¹

w(hat) y(ou) s(ee) i(s) w(hat) y(ou) g(et)

Example Sentences

The earliest Macs popularized "what you see is what you get," or WYSIWYG; formatting on the screen largely reflected how the page would look in print.

From Seattle Times

Describes a user interface under which "What You See Is All You Get"; an unhappy variant of WYSIWYG.

From Project Gutenberg