Creator says “GIF” is pronounced “jif”
“The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations,” Steve Wilhite, inventor of the GIF, said. “They are wrong. It is a soft ‘g’, pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”
This declaration from the father of the GIF sent the Internet into a chaotic frenzy over their beloved file format. Wilhite’s intentions were to end the annoying debate once and for all; but instead his answer created an uproar of disagreement, only adding fuel the long time format pronunciation debate.
The side in disagreement with Wilhite does have some valid points. GIF is an acronym for Graphic Interchange Format, meaning the G stands for Graphics. This would logically make the abbreviation begin with a hard G as the word Graphics also starts with a hard G, not a soft G. The geek know-it-alls of the Internet are set on not losing their hard G, despite with the creator says.
Wilhite is the creator after all, so shouldn’t he be entitled to the pronunciation of his own creation? He did in fact invent the now widely used format back in 1987 while working at the nations first major online service, CompuServe. Shouldn’t we all just agree with the way he pronounces his own invention?
According to the lovely people of Twitter, apparently not. Thousands of shocked, confused and angry tweets were composed after Wilhite attempted to end the debate on May 21 when he won the Lifetime Achievement award at the Webby Awards. His acceptance speech consisted of a GIF reading point blank “IT’S PRONOUNCED ‘JIF’ NOT ‘GIF,’” along with some dramatic music, a small smirk and then walked off the stage. Something so short and clever has lead to more hurt and anger than the infamous disaster of Yahoo taking over Tumblr.
The largest source of anger comes from the fact that Wilhite took 26 years to state the correct pronunciation. People actually feel like they’ve been lied to and that this whole debate may have been avoided if he had made it clear it was “jif” from the beginning. Instead these same people are rebelling in the only way they know how: humour. If you’re ever looking for some quick amusement, try searching “gif or jif” on Tumblr, then laugh at all the clever and extremely passionate posts of anger. Twitter is also funneling their rage into fun with tweets like the one from journalist Alistair Coleman reading, “[Creator] of the Gif says it’s pronounced “jif”. Why didn’t he say so earlier, the gerk?”
Society needs to calm down and accept that this tedious controversy will never be solved. The inventor of the file format straightforwardly told us how to say it, and we still didn’t listen. In all honesty it doesn’t matter what you call it, “jif” or “gif” we all know what you mean. If you’re the person correcting everyone who doesn’t pronounce GIF the way you do, please just stop for your own safety because someone is going to snap at you eventually. We all need to embrace the humour this debate has brought us and just get on with creating more revolutionary moving picture thingies.