DescentBB

I'm going to buy a new monitor but need a mat type finish on the screen rather than a "shinny" screen.

What is the verbiage (description) of the screens?

what is it that a person could use to find different words that share meaning?

You are looking for a matte finish.

As for why there is a difference, and why there are glossy screens despite their significant disadvantage in any ambient lighting pretty much comes down to cost. Glossy screens let more light through than matte screens, so you can get the same measured brightness without having as powerful of a backlight behind the screen, this saves cost and power, which is why most laptops have glossy screens. (Although the tradeoff is that laptops are at best painful to use outside of dark rooms, or at worst outright impossible because the reflections off the screen will usually be several times brighter than the screen itself, since they target power savings before usability.)

Still trying to determine what I should look for in the specs of the monitor to get a non-glossy screen.. Are LCD & LED both the same finish?

There are no LED screens, they are just LCD screens with LED backlights (my own monitor falls into this category). Not too many sites even list what type of finish the screen has, if it is glossy or matte, you have to hunt around and research to find out.

One additional hint you can pull is if a monitor has an anti-reflective screen coating you can assume it is glossy, because matte finish screens do not require coatings.

Thanks for the info.