WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get A catchphrase from the old TV show Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In that became a desktop publishing byword, WYSIWYG (pronounced "whizzy-wig") refers to any technology that enables you to see images onscreen exactly as they will appear when printed out. As scalable screen and printer fonts have become more sophisticated, and as graphical user interfaces have improved their display, people have come to expect everything to be WYSIWYG. But it isn't always the case--and certainly wasn't in the 1980s, when this term was first applied.