Gift Certificate Forms Or Gift Certificate Templates: A Question of Vocabulary

Posted on March 28, 2011 by

Since starting in the world of gift certificates, it puzzled me how there seemed to be so many words to describe essentially the same thing.

Gift certificate VS gift card

“gift certificate” is identical to “gift voucher” and while it refers to a different concept than “gift card”, people seem to use all these expressions to describe the same thing:

  • a gift certificate (aka gift voucher) is “a voucher entitling the bearer to a free product or service, intended to be purchased as a gift” http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gift_certificate – http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gift_certificate
  • a gift card is “a restricted monetary equivalent or scrip that is issued by retailers or banks to be used as an alternative to a non-monetary gift.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_card – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_card

gift certificate form VS gift certificate template

To describe what is generally accepted as “gift certificate template”, people use the following terms:

  • gift certificate form
  • gift certificate format
  • gift certificate template

Even though it seems these terms are used interchangeably on the internet, they are slightly different. It comes down to the basic difference between a template and a form:

  • a template is the skeleton of a document. In the case of a gift certificate, the template refers to the document containing a background picture, some headers, and maybe some field names (like ‘recipient’s name’, ‘message’).
  • a form is a document that is filled by the user. So the user takes the template and fill it as a form, adding information as he goes. So he might write the name of his company(“Glastonbury Massages”), the name of the recipient (“Joe”), the certificate value (“$50?) and other information.

Gift Certificate Factory provides gift certificate templates that you can print and sell to your customers. Check out our gift certificate template gallery.

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