Wilhite and the team who developed the file format included in the technical specifications that the acronym was to be pronounced with a soft g. A minority prefer to enunciate each letter of the acronym individually, creating the pronunciation / dʒ iː aɪ ɛ f/ ( listen). Some individuals pronounce the word with a hard g, as in / ɡ ɪ f/ ( listen), whereas others pronounce it with a soft g, as in / dʒ ɪ f/ ( listen). The acronym GIF, commonly pronounced as a monosyllable, has a disputed pronunciation. GIFs are popularly used to display short, looped animations. The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is an image file format developed in 1987 by Steve Wilhite at the American online service provider CompuServe. The pronunciation of the acronym can also vary in languages other than English.

English dictionaries generally accept both main alternatives as valid, and linguistic analyses show no clear advantage for either based on the pronunciation frequencies of similar English words. In addition, some speakers enunciate each letter in the acronym, producing / dʒ iː aɪ ɛ f/ ( listen). The controversy stems partly from the fact that there is no general rule for how the letter sequence gi is to be pronounced the hard g prevails in words such as gift, while the soft g is used in others such as ginger. Others have pointed to the term's origin from abbreviation of the hard- g word graphics to argue for the other pronunciation. Many public figures and institutions have taken sides in the debate Steve Wilhite, the creator of the image file format, gave a speech at the 2013 Webby Awards arguing for the soft- g pronunciation. Popularly rendered in English as a one-syllable word, the acronym is most commonly pronounced / ɡ ɪ f/ ( listen) (with a hard g as in gift) or / dʒ ɪ f/ ( listen) (with a soft g as in gem), differing in the phoneme represented by the letter G. The pronunciation of GIF, an acronym for the Graphics Interchange Format, has been disputed since the 1990s. Steve Wilhite's slide at the 2013 Webby Awards

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