Yeah -- I thought it meant something along the lines of "for example" or "one instance being"?

Usually people use the lower case with dots, i.e. `i.e.`. Also one usually uses `e.g.` in those situations with `i.e` reserved for "that is". To illustrate:

"We had to come up with some way to cut our burn rate, e.g. lay off (i.e. fire) some of our workforce; cut facilities (i.e. get out of our leases),..."

As an aside, I wish there were "minor aside" conversations that wouldn't pollute the main thread so I could respond without occupying massive comment-space.

In AE it's also usual to have a comma following them, so

"We had to come up with some way to cut our burn rate, e.g., lay off (i.e., fire) some of our workforce; cut facilities (i.e., get out of our leases),..."

The reasoning being that these expressions are "parenthetic and should be punctuated accordingly" The Elements of Style

+1 for the comma (Strunk and White and Chicago Manual of Style for references)

id est (i.e.) = that is (literally "it is")

exempli gratia (e.g.) = for the sake of example, for example

See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases

Thanks.

Coincidentally, I had years of Latin so I knew those, but thought this had some other contextual meaning, a name of something (like IE for Internet Explorer). Apparently not!

e.g. -> example

i.e. -> in other words

e.g. -> Egg-zample

i.e. -> the other one

i.e. -> In other wErds

Surely not Internet Exploder?