Dear Tina - How do you pronounce .GIF?

By +Tina Cruris

Dear Tina, I recently got into an argument at school about how to pronounce the word GIF. I have always said GIF with a hard G and a buddy claims that it's GIF with a soft G. Please tell me I am right so that I can rub it in his face. I know you are a girl but I know that you can give advice on any topic and I trust you to come through with the facts for me.

P.S. you are super hot looking. Sometimes in bed at night, I read your posts and I touch myself. I tried friending you on facebook but I think there is something wrong because I never get an answer.

Thanks (for everything), Jimmy Johnson

Dear Timmy, first ewwe, TMI dude. I am probably old enough to be your mother big sister. Second, yes I am a girl and girls do know about computer stuff too. So I asked my co-writer and residential techy/geeky guy +Brad Naylor, for the answer his opinion.

For the non-tech people reading this, the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is type of computer image format introduced in 1987 by CompuServe. The popularity of the GIF waned as users demanded higher image quality, however in the last few years the GIF has seen a resurgence thanks to meme culture and the ability to easily create comedy animated GIFs.

Cats are a primary source of Giffy fun

Now you know what a GIF is, you should probably learn how to say it properly. In the English language there are 3 ways to pronounce a leading 'G'. Hard G as in GO, soft G as in GIRAFFE, and foreign G as in GYRO (the food not the spinny thing).

Option 3 is certainly out, so it's "GIF" or "JIF". My thought would be that the G stands for Graphics, and graphics starts with a hard G so i's most definitely GIF. Brad on the other hand is all about the JIF, claiming that the guy that invented the GIF says that it is pronounced JIF.

Animated JIF

OK so wait a minute, if it is pronounced JIF, maybe Dr. Emmett Brown was right about how much energy is needed for time travel...

That's right it's a Jigawatt, and a Jif and Jood Luck convincing the world about it.

For curiosity I have created a poll for you all to share your thoughts on the Jif/Gif discussion.

If you need to expand on your poll response, please use the comments section below.