ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GIFs IN A (G)IFFY.
Whether you pronounce it as ‘gif’ or ‘jif’, or you just flat out spell out G-I-F, there’s a lot of interesting things to learn about the file format that has rapidly become more than just a communication tool.
Perhaps what would interest you more than the correct pronunciation of ‘GIFs’ is how old the file format is.

GIFs were introduced on June 15, 1987. While that might sound unbelievable because of how modern and recent the file format feels, it has indeed been around for 32 years; a solid 2 years before the advent of the World Wide Web!
GIFs were developed as a solution to a problem identified by the team at CompuServe when they wanted to stop using black and white images. The problem though, was that colored images were too large to be stored on the computers and even if they could be stored, the internet connection was too slow to display them on all the computers at once.
Steve Wilhite, an American developer working at CompuServe at that time figured that if he used a compression algorithm and combined it with certain image parameter, he could achieve the goal described above. He went on to create it and named it ‘Graphics Interchange Format’ and since then, the GIF has very slowly evolved into this essential part of our lives.
Today, you can use a GIF on virtually every platform, because advancement in technology means the file format can be made to work anywhere. You have probably found at least one GIF that communicates what you’d like to say and in the most hilarious way.
According to Wilhite, the first GIF he created was a long time ago- Perhaps you may remember this early GIF of a dancing baby:
There are speculations that GIFs became part of the mainstream web experience in 2016, but also consider the event at the 2012 Olympics where a fencer refused to leave her piste after losing to a computer glitch. Then, deputy sports editor of Buzzfeed, Kevin Lincoln, had used an app called Snapz to capture the video from the live stream and then saved it as a GIF.
Then he released a Buzzfeed article on the ’25 most absurd moments of the Olympic opening ceremony’ all captured in entertaining GIFs. These GIFs became viral and were discussed across the mainstream web.
In 2012 as well, the word ‘GIF’ was named as the Oxford Word of the Year (US) and on May 21 2013, Steve Wilhite received a life-time achievement award at the Webby Awards
In May 2015 Facebook added support for GIF and in January 2018 Instagram followed suit, adding GIF stickers to the story mode.
Now, GIFs are more than file formats, they have become soundless tools for the expression of diverse opinions, emotions and reactions. They are able to convey humour, support, or entertainment and have definitely become more accessible than ever before.
According to this article by WIX, GIFs are now beings used for varying purposes like ‘providing visual instructions’, providing relatable content’, ‘animating data’, ‘providing sneak peeks’ and ‘replying in style’
It definitely looks like this 32 year old invention has come to stay. And for the age-long debate about its pronunciation? Well, that was settled some time ago by none other but its creator, Steve Wilhite.
In 2013, he said:
“The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”
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