Computer usage, sometimes Computer English

Computer usage

COMPUTER USAGE, sometimes Computer English. The REGISTER of English associated with computer technology and electronic communication, for both professional and other purposes, such as: the creation, use, and maintenance of equipment; recreation, such as video games and electronic bulletin boards; the writing and transmission of electronic mail; the promotion of products; word processing, desktop publishing and electronic publishing; and informal usage, including slang. Such usage has both lexical and syntactic aspects, including word-formation, semantic change, and distinctive prose styles.
Word-formation
(1) Compounds, such as database an organized store of information, light pen a light-sensitive rod for ‘drawing’ on screens or for reading data. (2) Fixed phrases such as high-level language an algebraic code with elements of natural language for operating computers, mainframe a very large computer system. (3) Abbreviations such as ASCII (pronounced ‘Askee’) for ‘American Standard Code for Information Interchange’, CD-ROM for ‘compact disk read-only memory’, GIGO for ‘garbage in, garbage out’, WYSIWYG or wysiwyg for ‘what you see is what you get’ (that is, a precise correspondence between what is on screen and what is printed out). (4) Blends, such as the programming languages FORTRAN, fusing ‘formula’ and ‘translator’, and LISP, fusing ‘list’ and ‘processing’. (5) Eponyms, such as non Von Neumann architecture, any architecture basically different from the style of computer specified by the US mathematician John von Neumann, and Turing machine, an imaginary computer with characteristics as stated by the UK computing pioneer Alan Turing.
Semantic change
The adaptation of meanings and uses from the language at large into computer usage (new uses for old words), from computer usage to the language at large (public uses for private ‘jargon’), and from one register to another (such as from medicine to computer usage):