The modern-day, digital equivalent of quarrelling about politics or religion or something, the pronunciation of computing acronym GIF has been widely and doggedly argued to no official avail… until today! Let it be known, disbelievers: IT’S JIF, NOT GIF. Soft G. I know.
Creator of the almighty thing Steve Wilhite today lamented the dual pronunciation of GIF, short for Graphics Interchange Format, telling the NY Times,
“The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations… they are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”
Well, fuck, bro. I know you’re nominated for a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award and all, but PLS (pluhhs? plerrz?) kindly excuse everybody who assumed an acronym representing the hard-G’d word ‘graphic’ would translate into another hard G.
GIF was anointed word of the year in 2012 by Oxford Dictionaries, making the power and influence of this file extension a force to be reckoned with. Please see here something called ‘The GIF Pronunciation Page,’ a division of Wilhite’s website, whereby you can stand corrected some more.
Via The NY Times
