o2b.net : Tim Murtaugh

In the spirit of other grammatical musings, I point you to another worthy question:

Gif of Jif?

You know those .gif files. How do you pronounce “gif”?

It’s an interesting debate. The acronym stands for Graphical Interface Format, so the correct answer would seem to be a hard G — “gif”.

However, someone in the conversation mentions that the original branding campaign for the format (yes, technical standards need branding — see WiFi) included the slogan “Choosy developers choose GIF,” a play on the classic Jif Peanut Butter slogan.

So, the original developers (or at least the marketers) of the format declared it to be “jif”. But most people prefer “gif” — it makes more sense, seeing as “graphical” is pronounced with a hard G.

Plus “jif” is creepy to a surprising number of people. Weird.

(hat tip: Greg)