What Are The Eight White Squares Surrounding Resizable Objects Called

It is the kind of question that if you ask ten different people, you will likely get ten different answers, so what are those eight white squares actually called? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has some answers for a frustrated reader who wants to use the correct term in his article.

Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.

The Question

SuperUser reader Omar Abdelhafiz wants to know what the eight white squares surrounding resizable objects are called:

What are the eight white squares surrounding resizable objects called?

Microsoft PowerPoint:

Mac Xcode:

What are they called?

The Answer

SuperUser contributors Spiff, hBy2Py, Adrian, Cody Gray, user650881, and iXo have the answer for us. First up, Spiff:

The answer from hBy2Py:

The answer from Adrian:

Per duplode’s comment, this appears to be the nomenclature used by Microsoft: “Use resize and rotation handles” [MSDN]

The answer from Cody Gray:

The answer from user650881:

I do not like just “handles” because the word is too overloaded and thus ambiguous. Do not use it unless it is very clear from the context what you are referring to.

And our final answer from iXo:

Apple’s Motion 4 Manual

You can also use the onscreen control points to resize the rectangle.

An article on resizing graphics in CS5

In the default scaling mode, the selection scales graphic elements from the control point opposite the one you are dragging.

From Microsoft Office 2003 in 10 Simple Steps or Less By Michael Desmond

When you hover your mouse cursor over a cell or table edge, the boundary turns blue, indicating a layout area. Click this boundary and control points appear. You can click and drag these points to resize.

I agree with the comment by Steve Rindsberg that mentioned the preferred terminology might vary by application and will note that Microsoft’s documentation on PowerPoint appears to use “control points” for Bezier curves and “resize handles” (as suggested by hBy2Py) for resizing.

Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.