Eliminate Optical Microscopy

This special issue of Microscopy Today is devoted to light microscopy. Light microscopy is microscopy that employs light as a medium, or so I thought. Every week I see “optical microscopy” used as a synonym for light microscopy. I cannot understand the popularity of this confusing term. For people outside our field, the term “optical microscopy” must be perplexing: does it mean electron optical or light optical? My point is that we should present the techniques we use in clear unambiguous language: light microscopy, electron microscopy, scanned probe microscopy, etc. Regardless of logic, there are still strong adherents to the term “optical microscopy.”