There are disagreements about how to pronounce the acronym ‘GIF’ for the popular image format, even though there’s an authoritative answer. Even Microsoft Word is confused about how to say GIF with the Read Aloud feature.
Stephen E. Wilhite, the developer of the Graphics Interchange Format or GIF passed away earlier this month. Obituary . GIPHY, home of all thing GIF, published this nice tribute as an animated GIF, naturally.
“gif” vs ‘jif’
Mr Wilhite was quite firm that his creation is pronounced ‘jif’ with a soft g sound as in jiffy” .
“The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is a soft G, pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.”
Mr. Wilhite as told to The New York Times in 2013
How Microsoft Word says ‘GIF’
We thought it would be interesting to see which pronunciation Word’s Read Aloud uses. Seems like a simple question but, as usual with Microsoft Office, the answer is complicated.
Word ‘Read Aloud’ (Review | Read Aloud) uses both ‘gif’ and ‘jif’ depending on capitalization and which voice is chosen. We’re not sure why there’s a difference or which reason is stranger.
Word 365 for Windows
The Female voice always uses the hard G ‘gif’ pronunciation.
Male voice switches depending on capitalization. Full caps GIF gets the hard G treatment. But mixed or lower-case Gif or gif use the developer approved soft g sound.
Word 365 for Mac
Capitalization doesn’t seem to make any difference on the Mac version of Word 365.
But the voice selected does change the way GIF is said. Modern Mac has many voices to choose from, we tested four. “Victoria”, “Alex” and “Fred” all use the hard G pronunciation. “Samantha” says the correct soft ‘jif’.
Go figure …
Better voices for Office Read Aloud
Read Aloud in Word for Mac
