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Pronouncing GIF

Chris backhandedly asks how you pronounce GIF in a recent entry. I'm inclined to say that most of the time, I say it with a hard G. After all, it stands for Graphics Interchange Format, not Jraphics. Plus it's not peanut butter.

However, when I say it in a sentence with the word "JPEG" I almost always say it with a "j" sound: "jifs and jpegs." How about you?

15 Responses to "Pronouncing GIF"

  1. I always say Jifs or G - I - Fs.

  2. Pronunciation of GIF

    There is an old debate as to how to pronounce the acronym GIF. While it is one of those useless...

  3. In general I find old schoolers use the 'j' sound and new schoolers use the 'g' sound. I use the 'j' sound.

  4. Been pronouncing it with a hard G (as in "gaffer") since I started with computers...

  5. I'm a hard G kinda guy until I'm with one of those "Jiff" people and I usually adopt their way of saying it.

  6. Girl, groove, groin, Gilgamesh, GIF.

    Gyrate, genuflect, gerund, gerbil, JPEG.

  7. I really don't care if it's pronounced jif, I say gif with a hard G. GIF with a hard G sounds much better in my opinion.

    Same as "OS X" and not "OS 10".

    or

    "nome" for GNOME instead of "g-nome".

  8. How do you pronounce 'gift' or 'git'?

    Or spell it out.

  9. In German it's pretty clear that it's GIF like in graphics (there's no j-sound like in "jail").

  10. Gee eye eff

    But occasionally, I'll adapt to what others are saying in the current conversation.

  11. I pronounce it "pee enn gee" 😉

  12. I USED to think it was the hard G, but I see the creators say it was pronounced jif in the documents and the slogans were "choosy developers choose gif"... so it seems as though it was artistically intended to be gramatically incorrect... but it is actually not gramatically incorrect since the pronunciation of acronyms is apparently up to the author, in this case compuserve... there is also an email from the 1987 author telling some curious people it was always pronounced jif... so it depends now if you want to be true to the author or true to your opinion... so hopefully we can all be strong and call it peter pan...

    go to this next link, not to my email unless it is something nice...

    http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/july97/0045.html

  13. I don't care who invented it, it's pronounced "gif".

  14. I hear that whole jiff thing from the developer... but whenever I tried to say jiff it sounded wrong to me, and still does.

    Like someone said earlier. If it's supposed to be pronounced jiff it should be named the jraphics interchange format. Personally, I think the person who said "hey lets pronounce it wierd like... jiff" is a real gerk. I mean jerk. I mean gerk. Ah, forget it.

  15. It is, and always has been the soft 'g' (jif). Anybody who uses the argument that it should be a hard 'g' because it stands for 'graphical' had better start saying 'jay-feg' because the 'p' stands for 'photographic'.