Throughout this book, when referring to conformance to the ISO C standard, I will generally just say ‘C.’ Only if it is necessary to distinguish between Standard C and older, pre-Standard versions of C will I make a distinction.

At this writing the C++ Standards Committee was finished working on the language. Thus, I will use the term Standard C++ to refer to the standardized language. If I simply refer to C++ you should assume I mean “Standard C++.”

There is some confusion over the actual name of the C++ Standards Committee and the name of the standard itself. Steve Clamage, the committee chair, clarified this:

There are two C++ standardization committees: The NCITS (formerly X3) J16 committee and the ISO JTC1/SC22/WG14 committee. ANSI charters NCITS to create technical committees for developing American national standards.

J16 was chartered in 1989 to create an American standard for C++. In about 1991 WG14 was chartered to create an international standard. The J16 project was converted to a "Type I" (International) project and subordinated to the ISO standardization effort.

The two committees meet at the same time at the same location, and the J16 vote constitutes the American vote on WG14. WG14 delegates technical work to J16. WG14 votes on the technical work of J16.

The C++ standard was originally created as an ISO standard. ANSI later voted (as recommended by J16) to adopt the ISO C++ standard as the American standard for C++.

Thus, ‘ISO’ is the correct way to refer to the C++ Standard.