We’ve all been there — you run into someone you definitely know and you chat with them for a few minutes, but you’re wracking your brain to remember their name. Now it’s too late to ask because you might hurt their feelings. Well, it’s a good thing file formats don’t have feelings, because most people have no clue what “PDF” stands for — even those of us who regularly use PDF attachments in emails (and those of us who regularly forget to attach those PDFs to the email).
“PDF” stands for “Portable Document Format,” and it was conceived of by Adobe. In 1991, co-founder John Warnock initiated what he called the Camelot Project, which had a goal of making it easier for people to view, send, and print digital copies of documents. PDFs were created the following year, and officially launched to the public in 1993.
When you break down the acronym, the word “Portable” is arguably the most important. It helps capture the versatility of this technology, which is meant to make it easy to exchange files. The words “Document Format” are more literal in nature, denoting the fact that PDFs are a specific manner for saving digital files (as opposed to .doc or .mp4).
This discussion may make you think about the names of other common digital formats, such as JPEG, PNG, WAV, and more. “JPEG” stands for “Joint Photographic Experts Group” — a committee that conceived of this compression method for digital images in the 1980s. “PNG” stands for “Portable Network Graphics,” and is mainly used for digitally transferring images or graphics with transparent elements. “WAV” means “Waveform Audio Format” and is reserved for saving and sending audio files — this abbreviates the first word rather than the first letter of each word.
So in the spirit of exchanging PDFs, go ahead and share this knowledge with anyone else who may be curious.
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