The official answer on how you pronounce “GIF”.

After almost two decades of trying to figure out how to pronounce “GIF” properly, we finally have a definitive answer from the creator. Steve Wihite created the “GIF” format in 1987 for Compuserve and this week received a Webby Award for it. His acceptance speech was just five words:

“It’s pronounced ‘JIF’, not ‘GIF’.”

There you have it.

It also gives us a nice look back on the GIF, which began its life as an art file format for terrible online services like Compuserve and AOL, and migrated into being a clever way to animate construction signs on your website that you’re building which never actually got done. The format had a fall in popularity when the JPG and PNG formats rose to prominence, then rebounded as a way to create animated memes and short clips of pornography.