GIF or Jif? The Great Pronunciation Debate with Cathy Sirvatka: WPS008

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Is G.I.F. pronounced GIF or JIF? Join me, Cathy Sirvatka, as we dig into the amusing argument surrounding this well-known graphic format. We'll journey back to its beginnings, exploring the creators' original intent for its pronunciation. Spoiler alert: there's no wrong way to say it! 

We also get into its features as compared to the JPG and its historical role in web graphics. It's time to settle the debate. Sort of.  And remember, I'd love to hear your take on it and any other 'debatables' you encounter in your web design adventures.

Episode Transcript

Cathy Sirvatka (00:58):
Cathy Sirvatka: I was listening to a podcast the
other day and they startedtalking about the graphic format
G I F and they started arguingabout how to pronounce that
acronym and I thought to myselfI've heard this argument for
many years now, and there are alot of things in the world, and
in web design specifically, thatare debatable.

(01:20):
Not that there's necessarily aright or wrong way, but there
are different ways of seeingthings, pronouncing things,
doing things, and people stilldebate them.
I think this comes out ofperhaps the way you learned it
in the first place or yourpreference, and it causes me to
think that it's fun to havethese kind of debates and to

(01:42):
figure out people's reasonsbehind their position, but it
should never become anythingthat's so argumentative that it
divides us.
That's why I think these aredebatable items, because these
are debatable things and itdoesn't make you right or wrong
and it doesn't change theoverall outcome of something.

(02:02):
For instance, how do you say GI F?
Do you say it GIF or do you sayit GIF?
Now, the way you pronounce itdoesn't affect the artwork you
create in this format or the webdesign you create using this
format, although I will say,these days there aren't too many
of these graphic files outthere anymore because we've got

(02:25):
the PNG now.
Now, I was raised to say GIF andI learned that when I worked at
Bell Labs.
The reason I learned it thatway is because the company that
created this format was calledCompuserve and the team that
created it initially called itGIF.
They actually wanted it toreflect the name, or echo the

(02:48):
name, of the peanut butter GIF,peanut butter.
And they would say choose thedevelopers, choose GIF, which is
kind of cute.
Developers have a sense ofhumor.
Who knew.
It was such a cool format andthough it's limited in its
colors you can only have 256colors in a GIF it was really
great for flat illustrations,non gradient graphics, logos,

(03:14):
that kind of thing, and italways drove me nuts when I
would see flat colored logossaved as JPEGs, and that was
always because people didn'treally understand the difference
between the two.
But the GIF was a reallywonderful compressed graphical
format.
It introduced transparency andanimation and if you all

(03:34):
remember seeing spinny objectsall over web pages back in the
day because it was so fun andcool, who didn't want to have
spinny things on their web page?
Of course we all got sick ofthat and it didn't last too long
, thank goodness, but it becamethe go-to for the flat
illustration.
This graphical format is alossless compression and that

(03:57):
means that you can save it overand over.
If you want to open it, edit it, add something to it, save it
again.
You will never lose the quality, the initial quality of the
graphic.
It never loses data, as opposedto the JPEG, which is used for
thousands and millions of colors, like photographs.
That is a lossy format, meaningevery time you resave it, if

(04:21):
you do anything to it.
You lose data each time, alittle bit of data each time,
and over time it can reallydegrade the quality.
So that's lossy, but the GIFwas lossless and this was a
really great thing.
So, anyway, which is correct,GIF or GIF?
Well, actually both are correct, I know right.

(04:43):
So, like I said, the folks atCompuserve called it GIF, but
the G stands for graphics, andso if you didn't know the
original story, it would beunderstandable that you would
think graphics, gif, and thatmakes total sense.
And so we get this debate GIF.

(05:03):
Well, that's what the originalpeople said GIF because it's
graphic.
So the dictionaries that Ilooked at say both
pronunciations are correct.
So how's that?
It's debatable, but, as itturns out, both are correct and
it's okay.
It's okay people.

(05:24):
I've heard so many argumentsabout this and it's really it's
more like an argument betweenfans of different sports teams,
which is fun, you know, it'sjust kind of a tongue-in-cheek
argument, yeah, so I guess it'sjust one of those things where
we need to give grace to thosewho say it differently than
we're used to.
So what do you think?

(05:45):
Which way do you say it, andwhat other debatables do you
know about?
I'd love to hear what you maybe having debates about within
your work sphere.
Let me know and I'll do anepisode about it.