ODD AND ENDS OF THE HARD GEE

Originally published on October 10, 1997

Just in case you wanted to join this offshoot of Engst's Tidbits, and one should perhaps drop this to Berman, ha ha ho ho! Did I tell you? Garfinkel snuffed the IAG account, poof gone. I deleted the web server files earlier this week. His letter graciously thanked me for my efforts, but admitted that the site was a failure. Of course he ended with the obligatory carrot of future work, yuckety yuck...

From the—It's "Jiff" and I Don't Want to Hear Another Word—department, I find that while logic may dictate the "g" in GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) is pronounced hard, like gift or gefilte fish, that hasn't stopped dozens and dozens of readers from offering opinions, many of them hilarious.

However, several people wrote to say that they either worked with folks at CompuServe or read the original GIF specification, all of which specified a soft "g". None of us at NetBITS understand why we haven't seen the definitive word before, so here it is. Charlie Reading writes:

"I worked with the creator of GIF (Steve Wilhite) when I was still employed by CompuServe. Steve always pronounced it "jiff" and would correct those who pronounced it with a hard G. "Choosy developers choose GIF" (spinning off of a historically popular peanut butter commercial)."

Well I, for one, will stand by the hard "G" as in graphical. I prefer the all natural peanut butter, anyway. And I'm not about to be given pronunciation lessons from a Compuservant. Interesting bit of history, nonetheless. Over the years I've noticed that almost all graphic arts types pronounce it hard, while a certain percentage of computer types go soft...