What You Get
Back in the 1970s, there was a comedian named Flip Wilson who hosted his own variety show. On this show, he played many characters – one of which was (in drag) a sassy woman named Geraldine. Geraldine would always display outrageous, over-the-top behavior…and the answer to all these antics was the catchphrase “What you see is what you get.” This is where the phrase originated, and the phrase very much applies to what its namesake WYSIWYG provides a computer user: With wysiwyg editors, a user is able to see just what they are getting out of a page they design – even as they are creating it.
