In computing, endianness is the ordering of individually addressable sub-units (words, bytes, or even bits) within a longer data word stored in external memory. The most typical cases are the ordering of bytes within a 16-, 32-, or 64-bit word, where endianness is often simply referred to as byte order. The usual contrast is between most versus least significant byte first, called big-endian and little-endian respectively. Mixed forms are also possible; the ordering of bytes within a 16-bit word may be different from the ordering of 16-bit words within a 32-bit word, for instance; although rare, such cases are sometimes collectively referred to as mixed-endian or middle-endian.