The old debate over how to pronounce GIF, which stands for Graphics Interchange Format, re-emerged last week when Steve Wilhite, the inventor of the common graphic image format, declared it should be pronounced “jif”, like the brand of peanut butter, instead of with a hard G sound.
At the Webby Awards Tuesday night, Mr. Wilhite was greeted onstage by David Karp, the 26-year-old founder (and high school dropout) of Tumblr who this week sold his company to Yahoo for $1.1 billion.
Mr. Wilhite displayed his five-word speech on a screen above the stage: “It’s Pronounced ‘JIF’ not ‘GIF.’” The audience cheered with approval and it appeared the debate was settled.
