Applications of scanning force microscopy (SFM) in polymer studies have flourished in this decade, reflecting (a) the power of SFM to image both structure and propertiesdown to the nanometer scale, and (b) the low cost and ease of getting useful results in ambient environments. One difficulty in SFM of polymers has been damage incurred by soft materials during the imaging process. The problem was alleviated by the development of special dynamic modes of operation, in which the probe spends little or no time in contact with the polymer surface. Such modes were dubbed “tapping”, “intermittent-contact”, “non-contact”, “near-contact”, etc. As studies proliferated, it became apparent that different researchers were using different terms to refer to the same apparent imaging mechanism, or the same term to refer to different imaging mechanisms. This quandary derived from a poor understanding of exactly how the SFM probe interacts with the sample surface.1-3,5