(PCM) There are two types of people in the world… those who refer to a type of online picture (gif) as a “Jif” with a sof “g” and those who pronounce it “Gif” with a hard “G.” GIF stands for ‘Graphics Interchange Format.’
Introduced by Compuserve in 1987, the format is limited to to 256 distinct colors, and can often seem a bit grainy, but can be used to make simple”moving” online picture like this:
Steve Wilhite, caused a firestorm in late May, 2013 by saying “The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is a soft ‘g,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”
The inventor of the format has said that before, on several occasions, and while the ‘soft-g’ JIF pronunciation was used in the early days of the internet, the vernacular has changed, and the ‘hard-G’ GIf is now said by more people.
I’ve been on team “Gif” (hard G) since I started toying with the internet in the late 1990s. The jiffies need to catch up. Game over.