Style notes

In general terms, we follow Microsoft guidelines for terminology, as detailed in:
Microsoft® Computer Dictionary, Fifth Edition (Microsoft Press, 05/01/2002).
This establishes basic meanings, spellings and wordforms.

Unfortunately, this has not been updated for more than five years although MicroSoft (MS) terminology changes almost as often as they issue software patches.

More recent glossaries can be accessed through http://www.microsoft.com/resources/glossary/default.mspx.

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Some exceptions are noted below:

We use ie. (NOT i.e.) for "that is", and eg. (NOT e.g.) "for example". This violates Microsoft documentation standards, but we like to live dangerously.

We also use etc. as an abbreviation for "et cetera" (it means "and so on"). Curiously, this also violates MS standards, but you'll find many examples of this in their software and documentation.

Like MS, we use both "System tray" and "Notification area" as the name of the right-hand section of the Taskbar that normally includes the clock. (If anyone's actually interested, there's a whole debate about it [here].)