You can pronounce GIF with a hard 'G' (like in "gift") or a soft 'G' (like in "gin"), but the creator, Steve Wilhite, intended it to be pronounced with a soft 'G', like "JIF". While many people say "GIF" (hard G) because it's short for "Graphics," dictionaries accept both, and the debate continues, though the creator's preference for "JIF" is well-documented.
Upon accepting the award at the ceremony, Wilhite displayed a five-word slide that simply read, in all caps: "It's pronounced 'jif' not 'gif'". Here, jif refers to the soft g pronunciation. Following the speech, Wilhite told The New York Times: "The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations.
Steve Wilhite releases the Graphics Interchange Format, or GIF, while working for Compuserve. He called it a GIF with a soft g. “Choosy developers,“ he reportedly said, “choose JIF.” This was of course a play on the peanut butter brand Jif's line “choosy mothers choose Jif.”
Why is the brand called Jif®? The Jif® brand was founded in 1958, and the name was chosen because it was easy to say, spell and remember!
While the two words may look similar, they have vastly different meanings and pronunciations. So, let's get a couple things straight right off the bat: Jif® is peanut butter; GIFs are looping animations.
The inventor of GIF is Steve Wilhite. In a lifetime achievement award acceptance speech, he famously provided a gif with five words in it saying, It's pronounced "JIF" not "GIF".
People who originally used the format used this pronunciation. Over time, because of the fact that most people read the letters in the extension '. gif' before ever hearing the word pronounced, the pronunciation with a hard G (a voiced velar stop) became more and more common.
GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format, a file format created by Steve Wilhite at CompuServe in 1987, known for its ability to display short, looping animations and support both static and animated images, commonly used for memes and reactions online.
There has been some debate surrounding the question of what does GIF stand for, but creator Wilhite confirmed that GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. The name was chosen by Wilhite and his team specifically so they could call it a GIF.
To make a GIF, use an online tool like GIPHY or Canva, or apps like GIPHY/Canva on mobile, by uploading a video or image series, trimming/editing the clip (adding text/stickers), and then exporting/downloading it as a GIF file, with options for file size and quality depending on the platform. Professional software like Photoshop offers more control by converting image layers into animated frames for detailed GIFs.
Technically, the GIF format doesn't have sound capacity, but you can still create an animated GIF with sound using our online video editor. To retain the audio playing over your GIF, you must download your file as an MP4 or MOV. Some platforms call them audio GIFs and let you upload and watch GIFs with sound.
The pronunciation of GIF is one of the oldest and most aggressive internet debates. Some of these will never be settled, but luckily with the GIF debate there's an actual answer. The creator of the GIF, Steve Wilhite, not only pronounces it as "jif", but he says that's is the only proper way to say it.
Stephen Earl Wilhite (March 3, 1948 – March 14, 2022) was an American computer scientist who worked at CompuServe and was the engineering lead on the team that created the GIF image file format in 1987.
Stephen Wilhite invented the GIF in 1987, decades before its mainstream use. He received a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award for his invention. He remained persistent in the 'soft g' camp of the GIF pronunciation debate.
A debate has raged for decades over the proper pronunciation of the acronym: Is it “jif” or “gif,” Wilhite was often asked. “The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations,” Wilhite told the New York Times. “They are wrong. It is a soft 'G', pronounced 'jif'.
Former Compuserve engineer and GIF creator Steve Wilhite told the New York Times that it should be pronounced "jiff" with a "soft g" sound, and he's been saying it that way ever since he created the file format in 1987. However, the Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations.
The first GIF ever made, created in 1987 by a team at CompuServe led by Steve Wilhite, depicts an airplane.
Jif (sometimes printed as JIF, styled as JiF) is an American brand of peanut butter made by The J.M. Smucker Company. It was first created as "Big Top" by William T. Young in 1946, then purchased by Procter & Gamble (P&G) in 1955 and renamed to "Jif". J.M. Smucker later purchased the brand from P&G in 2002.
Why would peanut butter before bed help you fall asleep? There are a couple reasons. Peanut butter contains tryptophan which is a precursor to serotonin which can have a calming effect on your brain. It is also high in healthy fats which can help stabilize your blood sugar.
The "worst" peanut butter for you is typically loaded with added sugar, hydrogenated oils (trans fats), salt, and other fillers, often found in conventional creamy varieties like classic Skippy or Peter Pan, and especially low-fat/reduced-fat versions, which substitute fat with sugar and carbs, making them less healthy than you'd think. The unhealthiest choices are those that stray far from just roasted peanuts and salt, masking poor quality with sweeteners and stabilizers, and some "natural" options can also be bad if they use low-quality oils or excessive emulsifiers.