In response

I recently received the following comment on an evaluation submitted by someone who attended my CSS class. Since they submitted it anonymously I have no way of responding to them directly. Therefore I’ve decided to respond here in hopes that they’re reading my blog.

One distractor [sic] was that the presenter referred to a .gif file as a .jif file. There are folks that rabidly insist that .gif be pronounced the same as .jif but that confuses the two file types when spoken that way. Common usage (and common sense) dictate that .gif be pronounced with the hard g sound to avoid confusion the the .jif file type. Like I said, it was a major distractor [sic] to me. It also pointed to a lack of basic understanding in an area where the instructor is supposed to be presenting correct information to others. It makes a person wonder what other bad habits he might be perpetuating.

First off, if the person with this concern had mentioned this while in class I would have been happy to respond and explain myself at that time.

Secondly, yes, there is a big argument over whether to pronounce .GIF with a hard ‘G’ or a soft ‘G’. I used to believe that the hard ‘G’ was the correct way, as does this person, due to the fact that .GIF stands for “Graphics Interchange Format” and therefore should be pronounced accordingly. However, and this is the key point to the whole argument for the soft ‘G’, the guy who invented the acronym pronounced it was a soft ‘G’ as in jiff the peanut butter. This is well documented on The GIF Pronunciation Page. Since there is no standard way of pronouncing an acronym (heck, I’ve seen arguments over how to ‘pronounce’ WWW,) the rule of thumb is whomever makes it gets to say how it’s pronounced. Therefore I’ve changed my stance and use the soft pronunciation.