All are pronounced as letters unless specified

Abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms

2FA

Two-factor authentication

AI

Artificial Intelligence

API

Application Programming Interface

AR

Augmented Reality

ARPANET

Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (pronounced “arpa-net”)

ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange (pronounced “ass-key”)

ASP

Active Server Pages

AV

Antivirus

AWS

Amazon Web Services

B2B

Business-to-Business

B2C

Business-to-Consumer

B2E

Business-to-Employee

Bash

Bourne-again shell (pronounced “bash”)

BASIC

Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (pronounced “basic”)

BBS

Bulletin Board System

BCC

Blind Carbon Copy

BIOS

Basic Input Output System (pronounced “bi-oss”)

Blog

Web Log (pronounced “blog”)

bps

bits per second

BYOD

Bring Your Own Device

Byte

By eight (group of 8 bits) (pronounced “bite”)

CAD

Computer-Aided Design (pronounced “kad”)

CC

Carbon Copy

CD

Compact Disc

CDN

Content Delivery Network

CD-R

CD-Recordable

CD-ROM

CD Read-Only Memory (pronounced “c-d-rom”)

CD-RW

CD-Rewritable (pronounced “c-d-rewritable”)

CGI

Computer-Generated Imagery

CEO

Chief Executive Officer

CFO

Chief Financial Officer

CIO

Chief Information Officer

CLI

Command line interpreter

CMS

Content Management System

COBOL

Common Business-Oriented Language (pronounced “co-bol”)

CPU

Central processing Unit

CRM

Customer Relationship Management

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets

CV

Computer Vision

DB

Database

DDoS

Distributed Denial of Service (pronounced “dee-doss”)

dev

development (pronounced “dev”)

DHCP

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

DL

Deep Learning

DNS

Domain Name System

DOM

Document Object Model (pronounced “dom”)

DOS

Disk Operating System (pronounced “doss”)

DPI

Dots Per Inch

DRM

Digital Rights Management

DTP

Desktop Publishing

DVD

Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc

DVD-R

DVD-Recordable

DVD-ROM

DVD-Read-Only Memory (pronounced “dvd-rom”)

DVD-RW

DVD-Rewritable (pronounced “dvd-rewritable”)

Email

Electronic mail (pronounced “ee-mail”)

EOF

End of File

ETA

Estimated Time of Arrival

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

FAT

File Allocation Table

FCC

Federal Communications Commission

FDD

Floppy Disk Drive

FORTRAN

Formula Translation (pronounced “for-tran”)

FOSS

Free and Open-Source Software (pronounced “foss”)

FTP

File Transfer Protocol

Gb

Gigabit

GB

Gigabyte

Gbps

Gigabits per second

GIF

Graphics Interchange Format (pronounced “giff or jiff”)

GIGO

Garbage In, Garbage Out

GIMP

GNU

Image Manipulation Program (pronounced “gimp”)

HCI

Human Computer Interaction

HDD

Hard Disk Drive

HDMI

High-Definition Multimedia Interface

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language

HTTP

HyperText Transfer Protocol

HTTPS

HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure

I18N

Internationalization (written abbreviation only, pronounced “internationalization”)

ICANN

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (pronounced “eye-can”)

ICT

Information and Communications Technology

IMAP

Internet Message Access Protocol (pronounced “eye-map”)

IoT

Internet of Things

IP

Internet Protocol

IRC

Internet Relay Chat

ISP

Internet service provider

IT

Information Technology

JPEG

Joint Photographic Experts Group (pronounced “jay-peg”)

JPG

Joint Photographic Experts Group (pronounced “jay-peg”)

JS

JavaScript

JSON

JavaScript Object Notation (pronounced “jay-sonn”)

KB

Keyboard

Kb

Kilobit

KB

Kilobyte

KB

Knowledge Base

Kbps

Kilobits per second

KVM

Keyboard, Video, Mouse

L10N

Localization (written abbreviation only, pronounced “localization”)

LAN

Local area network (pronounced “lann”)

LLM

Large Language Model

Mb

Megabit

MB

Megabyte

Mbps

Megabits per second

ML

Machine Learning

MOV

Apple QuickTime Multimedia File

MPEG

Motion Pictures Experts Group (pronounced “em-pegg”)

MS

Microsoft

MSDN

Microsoft Developer Network

MS-DOS

Microsoft DOS (pronounced “m-s-doss”)

NaN

Not a Number (pronounced “nan” or “n-a-n”)

NFC

Near-field communication

NFS

Network File System

NFT

Non-Fungible Token

NLP

Natural Language Processing

OCR

Optical Character Recognition

OEM

Original Equipment Manufacturer

OS

Open Source

OS

Operating System

OTP

One-time password

PAP

Password authentication protocol

PC

Personal computer

PDF

Portable Document Format

PGP

Pretty Good Privacy

PIM

Personal information manager

Pixel

Picture element (pronounced “pick-sul”)

PNG

Portable Network Graphics

PnP

Plug-and-Play

POP3

Post Office Protocol, version 3 (pronounced “pop-three”)

RAM

Random Access Memory (pronounced “ram”)

regex

Regular Expression (pronounced “rej-ecks”)

RGB

Red, Green, Blue

RGBA

Red, Green, Blue, Alpha

ROM

Read-Only Memory (pronounced “rom”)

RSS

Rich Site Summary, RDF

Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication

RTF

Rich Text Format

SaaS

Software as a service (pronounced “sahss”)

SEO

Search Engine Optimization

SFTP

SSH

File Transfer Protocol

SME

Subject Matter Expert

SMTP

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

SPA

Single Page Application

SRAM

Static random access memory (pronounced “ess-ram”)

SSH

Secure shell

SVG

Scalable Vector Graphics

SWF

Shock Wave Flash

TB

TeraByte

TCP/IP

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

TLA

Three-Letter Acronym

TLD

Top-Level Domain

TSR

Terminate and Stay Resident

TTL

Time To Live

UHF

Ultra High Frequency

URI

Uniform Resource Identifier

URL

Uniform Resource Locator

URN

Uniform Resource Name

USB

Universal Serial Bus

UTC

Coordinated Universal Time

VB

Visual Basic

VGA

Video Graphics Array

VHF

Very High Frequency

VM

Virtual machine

VoIP

Voice over Internet Protocol

VPN

Virtual Private Network

VR

Virtual Reality

WAN

Wide-area network (pronounced “wann”)

WMV

Windows Media Video

WYSIWYG

What You See Is What You Get (pronounced “wizz-ee-wig”)

www

World Wide Web

XHTML

eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language

XML

eXtensible Markup Language

Y2K

Year Two Thousand

YAML

YAML

Ain’t Markup Language (pronounced “yamm-ul”)

ZIP

move at high speed (file archive) (pronounced “zip”)

See also list of list of abbreviations, initialisms, and acronyms related to accessibility and disability