814-1: Feedback, Notes and Comments

A smaller postbag than usual came in after last week’s issue. Thanks to everybody who said it was good to have World Wide Words back and a fond farewell to the few who welcomed us back by unsubscribing.

Several pointed out that I’d spelled the noun prophecy as though it were the verb prophesy: blame late-night composition following the ADS vote in Boston. Others — mostly from the Silicon Valley area — commented that for them the graphics format called GIF was always said with a hard g. I’d not heard it said much (it doesn’t come up in conversation very often around my way), but always as “jif”, so the report I read of Oxford's announcement that it was pronounced like that raised no doubt in my mind. Oxford’s press release is more nuanced and informative:

GIF may be pronounced with either a soft g (as in giant) or a hard g (as in graphic). The programmers who developed the format preferred a pronunciation with a soft g (in homage to the commercial tagline of the peanut butter brand Jiff, they supposedly quipped “choosy developers choose GIF”). However, the pronunciation with a hard g is now very widespread and readily understood. Whichever pronunciation you use, it should of course be the same for both the noun and the verb.

More significantly, several Americans argued that the name of the # character isn’t hash but either number sign or pound. (I have heard that some older Americans prefer crosshatch.) Bryon Moyer wrote, “I frankly thought that hash was a Briticism. I’d heard it, but not often. On a phone, for example, you’d never hear ‘Hit the hash key’; you’d hear ‘Hit the pound key’.” It may be that hashtag is, indirectly, a British contribution to the language.

Several readers said they had difficulty in voting in the Macmillan Dictionary’s Love English Awards 2012. The design of the page isn’t optimum, especially for users with small screens or older browsers. World Wide Words is there, if you scroll to the end of the long list of nominations.