PDF

The file format for documents viewed and created by Adobe Acrobat Reader, Acrobat Capture, Adobe Distiller, Adobe Exchange, the Adobe Acrobat Amber plugin, etc. This technology has succeeded in standardizing the format of documents used and transferred on the Internet. One of the benefits of using Acrobat and PDFs is that it doesn't matter whether you're a corporate guy using Microsoft Office products, an engineer using a CAD program, or an art director using desktop publishing software-you can quickly deliver business documents to a colleague or to the entire company without having to recreate them in other applications.

PDF has revolutionized the printing industry to the degree that it is considered good business for publishers of books to offer a "hard copy version" and a "PDF version." You will often see graphical buttons on the Web that say "Download the PDF version," so go ahead and try it.

PDF is also seen and heard as "PDF format" (this is redundant, but widely used).