Static vs. Instance Members

A static member is a method or field that can be accessed without reference to a particular instance of a class. The most common static method is Main, which is the entry point for all C# programs; note that you do not need to create an instance of the containing class in order to call the Main method. Another commonly used static method is WriteLine in the Console class. Note the difference in syntax when accessing static methods; you use the class name, not the instance name, on the left side of the dot operator: Console.WriteLine.

When you declare a class field static, all instances of that class will "share" that field. If size in the following code example were declared static, and one Animal object changed the value, the value would be changed for all objects of type Animal.

A static class is one whose members are all static. Static classes, methods and fields are useful in certain scenarios for performance and efficiency reasons. However, subtle errors can arise if you assume that a field is an instance field when in fact it is static. For more information, see Static Classes and Static Class Members (C# Programming Guide).