‘GIF’ – You’re Pronouncing It Wrong…Probably

The GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) was created in 1987 by Steve Wilhite. Last year it was awarded Oxford Dictionary's Word of the Year! Here's the kicker. How do you pronounce it? Like it's spelled, with a hard G? Or with a soft G, like JIF? Ole Steve spoke up, and let's us know how it's prounced. Keep reading to find out how more info on the GIF and how it's pronounced!

From the NY Times:

Mr. Wilhite, then working at CompuServe (the nation’s first major online service) knew the company wanted to display things like color weather maps. Because he had an interest in compression technologies, Mr. Wilhite thought he could help.

“I saw the format I wanted in my head and then I started programming,” he said in an e-mail. (He primarily uses e-mail to communicate now, after suffering a stroke in 2000.) The first image he created was a picture of an airplane.

The prototype took about a month and the format was released in June 1987.

“I remember when other people saw the GIF,” he said. Colleagues abandoned work on on other black and white formats, he said, as graphics experts began to spread the GIF online. A triumph of speed and compression, the GIF was able to move as fast as Internet culture itself, and has today become the ultimate meme-maker.

In the last decade, the animated GIF has reigned supreme, and while Mr. Wilhite has never himself made an animated GIF, he said the classic, “dancing baby” from 1996 remains a favorite.

And here it is! His definitive answer as to how to pronounce GIF

“The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations,” Mr. Wilhite said. “They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”

Have you been saying it wrong all this time? All of us here have been!