The pronunciation of GIF, an acronym for the Graphics Interchange Format, has been disputed since the 1990s. Popularly rendered in English as a one-syllable word, the acronym is most commonly pronounced /ɡɪf/ (with a hard g as in gift) or /dʒɪf/ (with a soft g as in gem), differing in the phoneme represented by the letter G. 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. Others have pointed to the term's origin from abbreviation of the hard-g word graphics to argue for the other pronunciation.
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. In addition, some speak the name of each letter, as an initialism, producing /dʒiː aɪ ɛf/ . 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. The pronunciation of the acronym can also vary in languages other than English.