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PART I The technical knowledge of an engineer, and the elegantly witty style of a lit major. That’s how you strive to present yourself online, in e-mail, newsgroups and electronic forums. But do you actually pull it off? It is the goal of this series — an on-going one devoted to writing and style tips — to help you do just that. Well, we’re not claiming to give you the knowledge of an engineer, but hopefully we can help you to avoiding sounding like one. In this issue we’re going to take a look at Latin words and abbreviations. When used correctly, you’re the picture of erudition (although their overuse can make your writing sound needlessly formal or affected), but their misuse can make you sound like, well, an engineer. We’ll start with the biggies: I.e. vs. e.g. “I.e.” is short for id est, “that is.” Similar to saying “in other words,” use it when you’re about to explain the meaning or nature of a term or phrase (or use it to introduce a term after you’ve explained it). Don’t use it when you really mean to say “for example,” i.e., “e.g.,” which is short for exempli gratia, “for the sake of example.” Consider these examples: “The characters at positions zero through 127, i.e., the standard keyboard characters, are sometimes referred to as 7-bit ASCII characters.” Using “e.g.” in the above example would be incorrect. A comma should precede and follow both i.e. and e.g., although sometimes a dash is used followed by a comma, and sometimes e.g. is followed by a colon. “When setting body text — i.e., text that is meant to be read continuously — serif typefaces are naturally better suited than sans serif typefaces.” Note that both letters are followed by periods, indicating that each letter is an abbreviation. It’s common to see i.e. typed as “ie.,” but this is technically incorrect. Returning to the term “e.g.” for a moment, it is often followed by a list of examples, or only one. In other words, using it does not mean the list is complete or that all examples have been provided. “Oldstyle typefaces, e.g., Garamond, Bembo, Sabon and Caslon, can be used for both text and display.” Obviously the four typefaces listed after the "e.g." do not constitute a complete list — there are many other oldstyle designs. If it were a complete list, using “i.e.” instead of “e.g.” would be correct, but as it stands, "i.e." would be incorrect. “If you are using sans serif typefaces for body text, leading needs to be increased even more, sometimes to as much as 135 - 140% of point size, e.g., a 10-point sans serif font would probably look best with a leading of between 13 and 14 points.” In the above example, we could also have broken it into two sentences, beginning the second sentence with “E.g.,”. In other words, both e.g. and i.e. can be used at the start of a sentence. Viz. An abbreviation of videlicet, “it is permitted to see,” think of viz. as e.g. on steroids. The primary distinction being that a complete list is expected to follow it. If the complete list consists of one example, you may opt for the slightly more haughty “to wit” instead (although it wouldn’t be incorrect to use viz.), or the more neutral “namely.”

	i.e.	id est	that is	followed by an explanation
	e.g.	exempli gratia	for example	followed by one or more examples, completeness not guaranteed
	viz.	videlicet	namely, to wit	followed by a complete list