Besides reporting guidelines, the MIQE stresses the need to standardize the nomenclature associated with quantitative PCR to avoid confusion; for example, the abbreviation qPCR should be used for quantitative real-time PCR and RT-qPCR should be used for reverse transcription-qPCR, and genes used for normalisation should be referred to as reference genes instead of housekeeping genes. It also proposes that commercially derived terms like TaqMan probes should not be used but instead referred to as hydrolysis probes. Additionally, it is proposed that quantification cycle (Cq) be used to describe the PCR cycle used for quantification instead of threshold cycle (Ct), crossing point (Cp), and takeoff point (TOP), which refer to the same value but were coined by different manufacturers of real-time instruments.