GIF is an acronym first and foremost. Acronyms are invented by their creators who get to decide the pronunciation. No one is arguing that NASA, LASER, RADAR, MRSA, etc. are pronounced any differently because they don't follow 'English language rules'.
I knew someone with the initials A.S.S. They didn't go by that, they went by Ace. They came up with that because their initials reminded them of it and they liked it better. Are you instead going to call them Ass because you know that's what their initials spell, even though you know that isn't the name they want to go by?
The pronunciation is devoid of the spelling with acronyms. It never matters, and is always decided by the creator. With GIF they chose the pronunciation for several reasons:
- it's a pun meant to sell a product.
- products are easier to sell when they're memorable. Back in the early days of computing you had to work hard to spread what you'd done over what someone else had done
- it's fast, like jiffy
- they wanted to hitchhike off of the success of the peanut butter brand
Notably it's not one person that is deciding this pronunciation, though Steve was the inventor, the entire CompuServe company agreed on the pronunciation. It was written in the manual, and even the creators of .png agreed with the pronunciation (https://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngintro.html)
Here is a picture from CompuServe's magazine showing the correct pronunciation (it's a product, it has a correct pronunciation) (you can read the entire article here )
Another fun fact
CompuServe used to distribute a graphics display program called CompuShow. In the documentation for version 8.33 in the FAQ section, it states:
The GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), pronounced "JIF", was designed by CompuServe and the official specification released in June of 1987.
The image below is an example GIF that came with CompuShow:
It is a picture of CompuShow's author, Bob Berry. He used some of the then-new features of the GIF89 format to display text on top of graphics. One of the lines he entered in the text states:
Oh, incidentally, it's pronounced "JIF"
You can't see this text within a web browser, but if you save this image and load it up in GIF Construction Set or another animated GIF89 editor, you can see the comment for yourself. Drag and View also displays this text, but kind of screwed up. For further proof from Bob Berry, check this out.
Steven O'Neill writes: Another way to get the JIF line out of Bob Berry using standard Unix tools:
~>curl https://www.olsenhome.com/gif/BOB_89A.GIF | strings | grep JIF
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time % Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 37062 100 37062 0 0 69595 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 166k
|s,Oh, incidentally, it'spronounced "JIF"
fun quote about the subject:
Anyone who pronounces "GIF" with a hard G simply does not understand computer programmers (and any programmers who still insist on this silly pronunciation are simply unfit). No decent coder would pass up an opportunity to inflict a horrid pun on the world. And seeing as peanut butter is one of the principle three programmer foods (the other two being Pepsi and nacho cheese Doritos), the reference is immediately obvious.
