Wilhite Declares: It's JIF

MAY 21 2013 · 12:00

A reaction GIF in the 2013 vocabulary Steve Wilhite defended at the Webby Awards when he insisted: it is pronounced JIF, not GIF. Place: Cipriani Wall Street, New York City; the Webby Awards ceremony Figures: Steve Wilhite, 65, accepting the Webby Lifetime Achievement Award The Webby Awards limit acceptance speeches to five words. Steve Wilhite, 65, the lead developer of the GIF format (see [[compuserve-ships-gif87a-1987]]), accepts the Lifetime Achievement Award by holding up a screen that reads, in white text on black: IT'S PRONOUNCED JIF NOT GIF. The audience cheers. The internet does not agree. Wilhite's reasoning, given in a New York Times follow-up interview: the format was named after Jif peanut butter, with the choosy developers choose GIF joke baked into the team's working culture. He had been saying JIF since 1987. He had never publicly insisted on it before.