LEXICAL FEATURES OF ENGLISH USED IN IT DOCUMENTATION AND ONLINE COMMUNICATION

English has become the dominant language of global information technology (IT) communication. In the contemporary digital world, professionals from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds rely on English as a common medium for collaboration, innovation, and knowledge sharing. Technical documentation, software manuals, and online developer communities extensively employ English to ensure clarity, efficiency, and international cooperation. This study investigates the lexical features of English used in IT documentation and online communication, focusing on technical terminology, collocations, abbreviations and acronyms, and metaphorical expressions. Using a corpus-based approach, the research analyzes authentic texts drawn from IT documentation sources such as GitHub README files and Microsoft Docs, as well as online communication platforms including Stack Overflow and Reddit. The findings demonstrate that IT English is characterized by a high degree of lexical precision, frequent use of specialized technical verbs, extensive reliance on abbreviations, and metaphorical extensions that simplify complex and abstract technological concepts. The study further discusses the pedagogical implications of these lexical features for teaching English for IT Purposes (ESP), particularly in non-native English-speaking contexts, and contributes to applied linguistics, corpus linguistics, and digital discourse studies.