And the Oxford English Dictionary says both pronunciations are acceptable. Yet no less an authority than the White House has posted an image on its Tumblr feed advocating for the hard-G. Wilhite has argued for the soft-G pronunciation for years. But in the past couple of years, the Web has remembered how much fun it is to watch ridiculous things happen over and over again.Īppropriately, Wilhite received his Lifetime Achievement Award from David Karp, the founder of Tumblr, one prominent place where GIFs found a new fanbase. They fell out of favor as more advanced graphics technology emerged. ” The tweet linked to, what else, a multi-colored GIF flashing the same phrase.Īnimated GIFs were a staple of the early Internet. Wednesday afternoon, the compan y took to Twitter with a post reading, “It’s pronounced Jif®. So, it’s perhaps no surprise that the company got into the act itself. The always amusing HAL 9000 account (yes, somebody tweets as the robot from “2001”) posted an “animated JIF” – which is to say, a swirling, animated jar of the tasty, high-protein spread. “And I suppose those animals with long necks are called ‘JIRAFFES.’”Īnd, of course, the peanut butter brand was getting lots of free publicity along the way. “So instead of GIF, we’ve got to say JIF? YEAH RIGHT,” chimed in October Jones, creator of the “Texts From Dog” Tumblr and book. #GIF #hardg,” wrote Web designer Dan Cederholm. On Twitter, “GIF” became a trending topic as some folks pushed back.
Of course, in the grand tradition of heated debate, a flat statement of fact by the creator wasn’t enough to sway some partisans. When he received a Webby Award in 2013 for it, and delivered his five-word acceptance speech (that’s all the Webbys allow), he flashed a GIF on the big screens at the Cipriani Wall Street in New York. Steve Wilhite created the Graphics Interchange Format, or GIF, while working for Compuserve in 1987. Those short, animated loops that have captivated the Web for decades? They’re pronounced like a brand of peanut butter. But we can settle another long-running geek debate:
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