It has had a confused taxonomic history dating back to Linnaeus's naming of the species in 1758.

[3] It lacks an obvious bulge on its forehead and it has a small, horizontal mouth which opens at the front.

[2] The colour of this species can be variable, normally it is greenish to bronze dorsally fading to pale greyish on the flanks and to silvery ventrally.

There are faint gold horizontal lines on the body and there is frequently a white or silvery streak on the cheek below the eye, and a narrow pale stripe below the dorsal fin base.

[5] Kyphosus sectatrix has a circumglobal distribution and is found in the warmer areas of all the world's oceans.

Juveniles commonly shelter among floating rafts of Sargassum and this allows them to disperse over vast distances.

[6] Given the circumglobal distribution of this species and the difficulty of identification a number of names have been assigned to populations around the world which have since been shown by morphological and molecular studies to be junior synonyms of K. sectatrix.