Formatting

How to spell formatting

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce formatting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does formatting mean?

1. nounThe arrangement and visual styling of text or data, such as fonts, spacing and headings.
2. verbThe act of preparing a storage device or structuring content into a set arrangement.

Formatting in a sentence

• noun

  The report looked messy because the formatting was inconsistent between pages.

• verb

  Formatting the hard drive will erase every file stored on it.

• noun

  She spent an hour fixing the formatting of the spreadsheet before the meeting.

• verb

  He is still formatting the document to match the company template.

Where does formatting come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word grows from 'format', which English took from French 'format' in the early 1800s, originally describing the size and shape of a printed book. The French term came in turn from the Latin 'formatus', the past participle of 'formare', meaning 'to shape' or 'to give form to', which itself rests on the noun 'forma', meaning 'shape' or 'pattern'. As printing gave way to computing in the twentieth century, 'format' broadened to mean the arranged layout of text or the structured preparation of storage media, and the gerund 'formatting' followed naturally. The same 'forma' root sits inside everyday relatives such as 'form', 'uniform' and 'transform'. The spelling trap is purely mechanical: 'format' ends in a single 't', but because the final syllable is stressed the consonant doubles before '-ing', giving the easily missed 'tt' in 'formatting'.

How the word is built

• format (from Latin formatus: shaped, given form)
• - t- (doubled consonant)
• -ing (verbal noun / present participle suffix)