A quick post today about a few letters: i.e. and e.g.

Have you ever felt imbecilic for using terms in sentences that you weren’t 100% sure of? I’ll admit, I’ve used “i.e.” and “e.g.” extensively throughout my life writing technical documents, teaching and even just in day to day blog posts I suppose. I’ll assume that I have used the terms correctly because no one has ever corrected my uses, but I never did know why I was writing “e.g.” in place of “Example”. Where did the G come from? I really never even questioned it before yesterday, to be honest.

This morning before I got into my work routine I needed to find out.

Well a quick search of the net turned up Yahoo Answers, which made me happy because someone else asked this question. It turns out that this is commonly misunderstood.

From my extensive research (ha), I’ve turned up the the following:

i.e. stands for id est, Latin for “that is”.

e.g. stands for exempli gratia, Latin for “for example”.

If you previously did not know this… you do now! Lucky you. If you did already know this… oh aren’t you a smarty pants, don’t think less of others who aren’t so linguistically savvy!