I distinctly remember that, at one time, the guideline pushed by Microsoft was to

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Asked: May 11, 20262026-05-11T00:48:21+00:00 2026-05-11T00:48:21+00:00

I distinctly remember that, at one time, the guideline pushed by Microsoft was to

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I distinctly remember that, at one time, the guideline pushed by Microsoft was to add the "Base" suffix to an abstract class to obviate the fact that it was abstract. Hence, we have classes like System.Web.Hosting.VirtualFileBase, System.Configuration.ConfigurationValidatorBase, System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase, and, of course, System.Collections.CollectionBase.

But I’ve noticed that, of late, a lot of abstract classes in the Framework don’t seem to be following this convention. For example, the following classes are all abstract but don’t follow this convention:

System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.DirectoryServer
System.Configuration.ConfigurationElement
System.Drawing.Brush
System.Windows.Forms.CommonDialog

And that’s just what I could drum up in a few seconds. So I went looking up what the official documentation had to say, to make sure I wasn’t crazy. I found the Names of Classes, Structs, and Interfaces on MSDN at Design Guidelines for Developing Class Libraries. Oddly, I can find no mention of the guideline to add "Base" to the end of an abstract class’s name. And the guidelines are no longer available for version 1.1 of the Framework.

So, am I losing it? Did this guideline ever exist? Has it just been abandoned without a word? Have I been creating long class names all by myself for the last two years for nothing?

Someone throw me a bone here.

Update I’m not crazy. The guideline existed. Krzysztof Cwalina gripes about it in 2005.