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GIF Becomes Word of the Year 2012
mikejuk writes "GIF started out as a humble acronym 25 years ago, entered common parlance as the format used for web graphics and now achieves fame as a verb by becoming Oxford Dictionaries USA Word of the Year 2012. GIF as a noun has always been an all-capital letter noun. Becoming a verb has caused problems concerning the use of capital and lower case letters. The common form is to keep the noun in caps and add the verbal endings in lower case — as in GIFed,GIFing), However, an all lower-case spelling with the f duplicated (giffed, giffing) is also being used."
Who even uses GIF anymore?
All the young people these days seem to be making funny little animated gifs of things.
Quite strange. It feels like geocities.
Now, while you're partying like it's 1999, please get off my lawn.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Pronunciation: /jif, gif/
The OED describes, not prescribes.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
More importantly, it conflicts. JIFF is another (albeit obscure) name for JPEG. (Joint Photographic Experts Group Image File Format.)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Here's the thing: If you invent something, you get to name it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format#Pronunciation
" According to Steve Wilhite, the creator of the GIF format, the original pronunciation deliberately echoes the American peanut butter brand, Jif, "
"Long time listener, first time caller."
PNG is good if you dont mind blocky distortion around your line art too!
Huh? PNG supports 24 and 32-bit colour- more than enough for anti-aliasing- and 8-bit transparency so you're either assuming that the limitations of GIF are those of PNG, or you're using an old browser that doesn't handle transparent PNGs correctly and messes up the background.
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I'm seeing animated gifs show up a lot in memes lately. It's like a new generation has discovered how to build them.
Proverbs 21:19
GIF is an acronym for Graphic Interchange Format, not for Giraffe interchange format. So the G in GIF is hard, just like the G in Graphic.
Laser is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, not Light Amplification by Ztimulated Emission of Radiation. Therefore the 's' in laser is unvoiced and should be pronounced "lay-sir" not "lay-zer."
Actually, no, that's still not right. The A in Amplification is a short A not a long one, so the word should be pronounced "lah-sir." But wait, the E in emission is long, so it should actually be "lah-seer."
Or we could admit that that's not how acronym pronunciation works and stop being dumbshits.
Does anyone actually even USE gifs anymore??
Aside from the odd animated gif here and there, I've not really thought I'd encountered one in a LONG time...
Shocked to see it as word of the year...
Even in 2012, animated gifs are more common than you give them credit for. People are even doing really neat things with them such as this (and I've got to admit, a 256 color palette is hard to work with, but they've made it look pretty good for the most part.)
I do concur though, it's odd for it to be the "word of the year" this far after its prime.