In 2020 the programmer forum StackExchange conducted a survey of more than 64,000 developers in 200 countries, asking how they pronounce the acronym. While the debate should have ended there, language is a strange and fickle thing, and despite Whilhite’s assertions a large segment of the population continues to insist that the hard “G” pronunciation is, in fact, the correct one. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.” In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, Wilhite reiterated his stance: “The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. When presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2013 Webby Awards, Wilhite used his 5-word acceptance speech – presented, naturally, in the form of an animation – to declare: It’s pronounced ‘jif,” not ‘gif’ According to Wilhite, the word is a deliberate reference to the popular peanut butter brand Jif indeed, he and his colleagues were often heard quipping “choosy developers choose JIF” – a riff on the brand’s famous slogan “choosy mothers choose JIF.” And he has stuck to his guns ever since. Yes, that’s right: despite all arguments to the contrary, the creator of everyone’s favourite embeddable animation format insists that it is pronounced with a soft G. The format’s ability to support short, looping animations made it extremely popular on the early internet, and this popularity would only grow over the next two decades, with the Oxford English Dictionary declaring it their ‘Word of the Year’ in 2012.Īs its creator, Wilhite should be the first and final authority on the word’s pronunciation. The Graphics Interchange Format was first introduced in June of 1987 by programmer Steve Wilhite of the online service provider Compuserve. As is often the case, things aren’t nearly as simple as they might appear. “Graphics” has a hard G, so G-I-F must be pronounced “ghif.” Case closed, right? Well, not quite. After all, the acronym G-I-F stands for Graphics Interchange Format. Yet despite 30 years of fierce debate, controversy, and division, we are still no closer to a definitive answer: is it pronounced “gif” or “jif’?Īt its face, the answer might seem rather straightforward. Some of the greatest minds and institutions in the world have weighed in on the issue, from top linguists and tech giants to the Oxford English Dictionary and even the President of the United States. It is the single most profound question of the 21st Century, a debate which has dominated intellectual discourse for more than three decades.
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