WYSIWYG

American  

[wiz-ee-wig] / ˈwɪz iˌwɪg /

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.

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noun

1. a WYSIWYG display.

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

WYSIWYG British  

/ ˈwɪzɪˌwɪɡ /

acronym

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

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WYSIWYG Scientific  

/ 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.

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Etymology

Origin of WYSIWYG

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 • Jan. 23, 2014

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

From The Jargon File, Version 4.2.2, 20 Aug 2000 by Steele, Guy L.