Document Glossary: Paperwork Terms Explained

Each term below gets its own page with the definition in the first sentence, a table of what's on the document, how long to keep it, and the official sources behind every fact. US-specific terms say so on the page.

Legal and identity documents

Apostille — a certificate attached to a public document so it is accepted in another country that joined the Hague Apostille Convention.
Certified copy vs notarized copy — one is issued by the office that holds the record, the other is a copy a notary watched you present; they are not interchangeable.
Affidavit — a written statement of facts that you swear or affirm is true before someone authorized to take oaths.
Power of attorney — a document that lets someone you choose act for you in financial, legal or medical matters, within the limits you set.
Living will — an advance directive that records the medical treatment you do or don't want if you can't speak for yourself.
Beneficiary — the person or organization named to receive money or property from an account, policy, plan or estate.
Proof of address — a recent document from a recognized sender that shows your name at the address you claim to live at.
Visa vs residence permit — a visa lets you ask to enter a country; a residence permit lets you stay and live there.
Biometric passport — a passport with a chip that stores the holder's photo and identity data, marked by the small chip symbol on the cover.
Machine-readable zone (MRZ) — the two or three lines of letters, digits and chevrons at the bottom of a passport or ID card, built to be read by a scanner.

Property and money

Title deed — the recorded document that transfers ownership of real property and names who holds it.
Lease vs rental agreement — a lease fixes a term, a rental agreement usually runs month to month; both set the rent and the rules.
Bank statement — the periodic record from your bank of every transaction, fee and balance on an account.
Pay stub — the statement that comes with a paycheck showing gross pay, each deduction and the net amount you received.

Tax and government identifiers

ITIN vs SSN — both are nine-digit US taxpayer numbers; the SSN comes from Social Security, the ITIN from the IRS for people who can't get an SSN.
EIN — the Employer Identification Number, the IRS's nine-digit number for a business or other entity.
W-2 — the annual form an employer sends you and the IRS reporting wages paid and taxes withheld.
1099 — a family of IRS information forms that report income paid to you by someone who is not your employer.
DMV — the state agency that issues driver's licenses, ID cards, vehicle titles and registrations; its name varies by state.

Health insurance

Deductible — the amount you pay for covered services before your insurance plan starts to pay.
Premium — the amount you pay for your insurance policy, usually monthly, whether or not you use it.
Co-pay — a fixed amount you pay for a covered service at the time you receive it.
FSA vs HSA — two tax-advantaged accounts for medical costs; one belongs to your employer's plan year, the other belongs to you.

Keeping, destroying and formatting documents

Document retention — the practice of deciding how long each kind of record must be kept and when it may be destroyed.
Shredding — destroying paper so the information on it can't be reassembled, the standard way to dispose of documents with personal data.
Encryption at rest — scrambling stored data so that it can't be read without the key, even if the storage itself is copied or stolen.
PDF/A — the ISO-standardized flavor of PDF built for long-term archiving: everything needed to display the file is inside it.
DPI — dots per inch, the resolution of a scan or print; it decides how much detail a scanned page keeps.
HEIC — the High Efficiency image container iPhones use by default, smaller than JPEG but not opened by everything.
E-signature vs digital signature — an e-signature is any electronic sign of agreement; a digital signature is a cryptographic one that proves who signed and that nothing changed.