Call this a PSA of sorts.
I was searching the Rocket Yard Blog for a specific article on WiFi. Or was it wi-fi? Hmmm â maybe it was WIFI in all caps with no hyphen? Or Wi Fi, with a space? All lowercase with no space? Should it even matter? *sigh*
So, how do you correctly spell WiFi?
Well⊠that depends.
âWi-Fiâ is a trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance, a network of companies that promotes wifi technologies and certifies products to make sure they conform to specific standards. So, if theyâre the ones who oversee the adoption of this technology, then I guess the correct spelling of Wi-Fi is settled.
Well⊠not necessarily.
What is WiFi?
It really depends on how you use the term. When most of us say âwifi,â we are usually referring to a WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network). âWhatâs your wifi password? Is there wifi at the hotel? Dude, my new refrigerator has wifi!â So, basically, we are way off the mark and have been using the wrong term for quite some time.
Why is that?
My theory is that once people started seeing the Wi-Fi certification logo on products, they just assumed the technology itself was called Wi-Fi. Which it isnât. Itâs the IEEE 802.11 family of standards. Plus, how the heck would you pronounce WLAN anyway? Wuh-Lan? Double-You-Lan? There could be wars the likes of how to correctly pronounce GIF.
But just as we tend to call all adhesive bandages âBand-Aids,â flying plastic discs âFrisbees,â and facial tissues âKleenex,â society has usurped the Wi-Fi branded name. And they changed the spelling to âwifiâ along the way. Thatâs probably a good thing because, as previously mentioned, âWi-Fiâ is trademarked. We wouldnât want the wireless cops arresting little Johnny for an essay he wrote showing his grandmother how to connect to the internet so she can FaceTime him.
Time will tell
Remember when we had âe-mail?â Then for a while, it was âeMail.â Now we have âemail.â The general consensus tends to drive rapid changes in a language like this. If you need proof of how the use of wi-fi vs. wifi has bourne out over time, look at this Google Trends chart going all the way back to 2004.
Does âwifiâ radically taking the world by storm make it the correct spelling? I donât really know, but it is how itâs commonly being spelled these days. At least when people are searching for it. And I guess thatâs okay because it is a fairly new word â made up by the people, for the people.
Most online dictionaries, as well as the macOS dictionary, redirect âwifiâ to âWi-Fi.â Still, the unhyphenated version will likely be widely adopted as an accepted spelling before too long. The AP Stylebook already says itâs okay, so I think itâs time for me to ditch the hyphen unless itâs referring to the Wi-Fi Alliance. Because, well, itâs their name.
Incidentally, have you ever noticed that WiFi is not hyphenated in the Wi-Fi Allianceâs own logo? Iâm just sayinâŠ
Whatâs the explanation for the âtwo-humpedâ pattern in wifi searches that appears prominently in the graph since 2012 or so?
Happy to be in Germany where itâs actually mostly WLAN (ËveËlaËn) :-)
Intel occasionally adds the dash in their product names (but apparently not their URLs):
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/189347/intel-wifi-6-ax200-gig/specifications.html
(Oh, and everyone knows gif is pronounced with âjâ as in jif, just like giraffe, Gnome and Galileo.)
I actually do the reverse oversimplification, I use âWLANâ for everything, including the technology. Pronouncing âWâ is a lot simpler in German, so it is a much more common term here than in English-speaking countries.
The IEEE 802.11 working group came up with the WLAN standard during a brainstorming session at the McDonalds in Nieuwegein. WLAN stands for Wireless Local Area Network that provides access to the Internet. Previously known as âwifiâ, coined by the wife of Dutch team member Cees Link
I also love these discussions. By the way, in Latin America most people pronounce âwifiâ as âwee-feeâ â which makes sense, of course.
Wi-Fi originated from the reference of âwide fidelityâ, referring to the bandwidth and signal quality at the very beginning of the standards development and from which the first standard was created. The abbreviation of the term âwide fidelityâ was the first thing that stuck and has remained. If anyone remembers it differently, Iâm happy to stand corrected.
Your Google Trends chart has a major user interface error:
When a chart has clearly ordered series, as this one does, the legend should show the names in the same order.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
I LOVE discussions like these! haha! [HmmâŠhow does one properly spell âhaha?â Or Ha-ha? or?âŠ]
Perfect.
Oh, and itâs GIF, pronounced similar to something you Give someone, like advice.
Hahahahaha!
Wrong thread to start a GIF war â thatâs over here: How to Correctly Pronounce GIF! :-)
I think thatâs a given ⊠or maybe a ⊠ACK!!
Haha â I see what you did there! Caught it in a jiffyâŠ
wyfy, silly. Like syfy.
Actually, as an old line Science Fiction fan, reader, and all that, I know that Isaac Asimov claimed that Science Fiction (capitalized) was the correct term for the literature of speculation. The term âSciFiâ was a derogatory term meaning silly cildrenâs movies and games. People have forgotten that, and now call it all scifi. I remain in Asimovâs camp, and I disdain all the stupid movies about fictional futures and superheroes.
So now people call it syfy and wyfy fits right in with that!
Goddamn trademark lawyers!
Iâm with Asimov: either say the words, of abbreviate it S. F. or S-F.
I recall the first words out of my fatherâs mouth when he saw me reading Andre Nortonâs Galactic Derelict:âWhy are you reading that SciFi crap?â
This did two things: 1, it made me a confirmed S-F reader; 2, I decided to become a scientist. Like most of his generation, he mistakenly thought imagination had no place in science. Today, I have two words for scientists with no imagination: fencepostâthey arenât going anywhere.
What does the OED say?
My question is not about spelling, but pronunciation. Are the two âiâsâ long or short?
Well, most say it with the long âiâ as in wÄ«fÄ«, but who knows. It could be another wiki where most pronounce it wikÄ (wih-key) instead of wÄkÄ (wee-key).
Iâve heard all of those, though with both long âiâ appears most common to me.
OT: Now, how does one pronounce âkludge.â I used to pronounce it âMicrosoftâąâ but we donât want to go there, do we? ;^)
Thank for clearing this up along with âemail.â I love the graph. Who would have thought someone took the time to gather the data and plot it. So itâs wifi, but is it Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi VI, or wifi 6, etc.?
Iâm not sure. You tell me! :-)