GIF is the short computer animation format ( I distribute a large collection for physics teachers) but how to ‘correctly’ pronounce it is a mystery to me. I prefer the soft g-version but I think the hard g-version is considered ‘more correct’ because the G comes from ‘graphic’?
Jif arrived on the scene after Skippy and Peter Pan, its two main competitors, which still exist to this day (via Jif History). Jif’s history actually begins with a small-time peanut butter maker being acquired by a much larger corporation. After Procter & Gamble purchased a peanut butter brand called Big Top from a Kentucky company, they revamped the brand by adding sugar and molasses, included oils other than peanut oil in the recipe, and branded the new concoction Jif (via The New Yorker).
The addition of these new ingredients resulted in some legal battles with the Food and Drug Administration. Because Skippy and Peter Pan decided to follow suit and add non-peanut products to their mixtures, while the FDA was pushing for the definition and the labeling of peanut butter to require the mixture to be made up of 95 percent peanuts, the peanut butter industry wanted the number to be 87 percent. After twelve years of back and forth, a compromise was reached at 90 percent.
Of course, for all of the initial fighting with the FDA, the predominant ingredient in Jif is still peanuts and the brand certainly uses a lot of them. It’s estimated that 188 billion peanuts are needed to manufacture Jif peanut butter. According to data obtained from the J.M. Smucker Company, one in every 10 peanuts grown in the United States winds up in a jar of Jif (via WKYT)
As with many well-known American brands, JIF has engaged in a number of successful marketing campaigns that have helped cement their status on grocery store shelves. A blue Kangaroo named Jifaroo was used as the mascot when the brand was introduced in 1958, but the marsupial disappeared from advertising in the 1960s (via Neato Coolville). Jif’s ad campaign “Choosy mothers choose Jif” helped make Jif the best-selling peanut butter in the country, a position that it has held consistently since 1981 (via J.M. Smucker).
You say gif, I say jif. Let’s call the whole thing off! The story is that Steve Wilhite, a computer scientist at CompuServe, led a team that developed the Graphical Interchange Format (GIF) in 1987. He intended to have GIF pronounced like the peanut butter brand: “choosy developers choose GIF.” In an e-mail to the New York Times in 2013, Mr. Wilhite is quoted as saying “The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.” Mr. Wilhite passed away from complications of Covid in March 2022. His favorite GIF was the dancing baby.
chireef almost 2 years ago
its gone AWAL from the shelfs. I miss it, the other brands just aren’t the same,
Maester Brow Premium Member almost 2 years ago
GIF is the short computer animation format ( I distribute a large collection for physics teachers) but how to ‘correctly’ pronounce it is a mystery to me. I prefer the soft g-version but I think the hard g-version is considered ‘more correct’ because the G comes from ‘graphic’?
Radish the wordsmith almost 2 years ago
Jif arrived on the scene after Skippy and Peter Pan, its two main competitors, which still exist to this day (via Jif History). Jif’s history actually begins with a small-time peanut butter maker being acquired by a much larger corporation. After Procter & Gamble purchased a peanut butter brand called Big Top from a Kentucky company, they revamped the brand by adding sugar and molasses, included oils other than peanut oil in the recipe, and branded the new concoction Jif (via The New Yorker).
The addition of these new ingredients resulted in some legal battles with the Food and Drug Administration. Because Skippy and Peter Pan decided to follow suit and add non-peanut products to their mixtures, while the FDA was pushing for the definition and the labeling of peanut butter to require the mixture to be made up of 95 percent peanuts, the peanut butter industry wanted the number to be 87 percent. After twelve years of back and forth, a compromise was reached at 90 percent.
Of course, for all of the initial fighting with the FDA, the predominant ingredient in Jif is still peanuts and the brand certainly uses a lot of them. It’s estimated that 188 billion peanuts are needed to manufacture Jif peanut butter. According to data obtained from the J.M. Smucker Company, one in every 10 peanuts grown in the United States winds up in a jar of Jif (via WKYT)
As with many well-known American brands, JIF has engaged in a number of successful marketing campaigns that have helped cement their status on grocery store shelves. A blue Kangaroo named Jifaroo was used as the mascot when the brand was introduced in 1958, but the marsupial disappeared from advertising in the 1960s (via Neato Coolville). Jif’s ad campaign “Choosy mothers choose Jif” helped make Jif the best-selling peanut butter in the country, a position that it has held consistently since 1981 (via J.M. Smucker).
louisb1030 almost 2 years ago
You say gif, I say jif. Let’s call the whole thing off! The story is that Steve Wilhite, a computer scientist at CompuServe, led a team that developed the Graphical Interchange Format (GIF) in 1987. He intended to have GIF pronounced like the peanut butter brand: “choosy developers choose GIF.” In an e-mail to the New York Times in 2013, Mr. Wilhite is quoted as saying “The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.” Mr. Wilhite passed away from complications of Covid in March 2022. His favorite GIF was the dancing baby.
chromosome Premium Member almost 2 years ago
Is that the peanut butter that moves when you click on it?