--- title: Jif Peanut Butter Wants You to Know How to Pronounce Gif description: Jif peanut butter wants you to know the right way to pronounce gif. Here's why it makes sense that the company is part of this. canonical: https://time.com/5790981/gif-peanut-butter/ author: Ashley Hoffman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-02-26T14:21:32.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-12T19:23:54.000Z og:title: The Debate Over How You Should Be Pronouncing Gif Rages On and Jif Peanut Butter Has Waded In og:description: Here's why it makes sense og:url: https://time.com/5790981/gif-peanut-butter/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt72a420b53b2851f2/698a0ab0b21a9c4395503355/PeanutButterJif.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Peanut butter og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Debate Over How You Should Be Pronouncing Gif Rages On and Jif Peanut Butter Has Waded In twitter:description: Here's why it makes sense twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt72a420b53b2851f2/698a0ab0b21a9c4395503355/PeanutButterJif.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Jif Peanut Butter Has Waded Into the Debate Over How You Should Be Pronouncing Gif by [Ashley Hoffman](https://time.com/author/ashley-hoffman/) ## Ashley Hoffman Updated: Dec 12, 2023 7:23 PM UTCPublished: Feb 26, 2020 2:21 PM UTC  close-up creamy peanut butter close-up creamy peanut butterGetty Images by [Ashley Hoffman](https://time.com/author/ashley-hoffman/) ## Ashley Hoffman Updated: Dec 12, 2023 7:23 PM UTCPublished: Feb 26, 2020 2:21 PM UTC Jif peanut butter has waded into one of the most fervent debates of our modern time: the right way to [pronounce](https://time.com/5398014/chrissy-teigen-name-pronunciation/) GIF. The battle has raged for some time now between those with strong feelings as to the hard — or soft — pronunciation of that big “G,” but nothing settles folks down like a classic snack food, right? For what it’s worth, which is everything at this point, Steve Wilhite, who invented the GIF file back in 1987, told the [New York _Times_](https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/battle-over-gif-pronunciation-erupts/) that it’s definitely pronounced softly, as in “jif.” What’s more, he even based the name of the file on this very company’s staple of American cuisine. That’s right. It’s technically “Jif,” _just like the peanut butter_. Not everyone agrees with the godfather. > [](https://twitter.com/Jif/status/1232307117731852289) Of course, GIFs, an acronym for graphics (hard G) interchange format, are those fun animated images that are now inseparable from internet life. Spreadable like peanut butter, the expressive shorthand is one of the most joyful aspects of internet culture. So how exactly to pronounce GIF has been up for a rather silly debate that goes way back for internet obsessives. As far as debates go, this is an old, well, debatable one. **READ MORE:** [Here’s a Timeline of the Debate About How to Pronounce GIF](https://time.com/5791028/how-to-pronounce-gif/) Even the White House was not above [saying its piece on Tumblr](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/04/white-house-gif-pronounced-hard-g.html) when the debacle reached its fever pitch in the spring of 2013\. (The administration was firmly in the “hard G” camp.) And as to be expected, Jif was there with a marketing stunt back then. > [](https://twitter.com/Jif/status/337277962837704705) And because anything goes when it comes to the Internet, it should come as no surprise that Jif’s parent company J.M. Smucker Company has teamed up with the GIF destination Giphy.com to label some extra special (and extra confusing) limited jars of Jif peanut butter with a “Gif” label. “We’re teaming up with Giphy to put a lid on this decade-long debate and provide there is only one Jif,” the company’s vice president of marketing, Rebecca Scheidler, wrote in a press release. “Jif is peanut butter, GIFs are animations!” We report, you decide. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5790981/gif-peanut-butter/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5790981/gif-peanut-butter/"},"headline":"Jif Peanut Butter Has Waded Into the Debate Over How You Should Be Pronouncing Gif","datePublished":"2020-02-26T14:21:32.000Z","dateModified":"2023-12-12T19:23:54.000Z","description":"Jif peanut butter wants you to know the right way to pronounce gif. 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