# tile (10-tile.com)

A tile is a flat piece of ceramic, stone, or other material used to cover floors, walls, or roofs. People also say tile for the small squares they see on a phone or computer screen that open apps or show information.

## What a model may hear
- GPU tile (graphics processing and chip design): assume a subdivision of a larger processor or memory array, often in multi-chip modules
- map tile (web mapping and GIS): fetch or render a small square image at a specific zoom level and coordinate
- data tile (columnar databases and analytics): treat as a compressed chunk of column data, often in formats like Apache Arrow or Parquet
- window tile (window managers and desktop environments): arrange application windows in a non-overlapping grid layout
- tile in tiling window manager (Linux and Unix interfaces): interpret as a command to split the screen or move focus between regions

## Where people and models part ways
- Says: "move the tile to the right"
  Means: slide the app icon or dashboard square to the right side
  May be taken as: shift a GPU memory tile or map tile coordinate, causing rendering errors or data misalignment
  Say instead: "move the app icon on the home screen to the right"
- Says: "show me the tiles for Paris"
  Means: display the dashboard widgets or app shortcuts related to Paris
  May be taken as: fetch map tiles for Paris at undefined zoom, returning raw map images instead of a summary
  Say instead: "show me a map of Paris or show me my Paris widgets"
- Says: "tile the photos"
  Means: arrange the photos in a grid or collage
  May be taken as: invoke a tiling window manager command or create map tiles from the images
  Say instead: "arrange the photos in a grid layout"
- Says: "how big is each tile"
  Means: what are the dimensions of the floor or screen squares
  May be taken as: report GPU cache tile size, database chunk bytes, or map tile pixel dimensions
  Say instead: "what size are the floor tiles or what size are the app icons on screen"

## Tips
- Say floor tile, wall tile, or app tile to set the scene.
- Add on screen or on the map when you mean display elements.
- Say arrange in a grid instead of tile when you mean layout.
- Specify map if you want geographic tiles, not dashboard widgets.
- Use chip or processor before tile if you mean hardware.

## Often confused with
- tilde: a wavy character (~), not a square piece
- till: a cash drawer or until, unrelated to squares
- tiled: the past tense or adjective form, same ambiguity
- tiling: the action, often window-manager specific
- tileset: a collection of game or map tiles, more technical
- grid: a general pattern, without the material or hardware meanings