I’ve been saying “earl” since the Web started. I think it sounds weird when people spell it out.
EARL? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that.
I work for the city’s IT service provider and I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard anyone there say EARL. But most are web developers or other sorts of IT engineers and tend to say “address” or “site name” when talking about a URL.
Come to think of it, I don’t say URL much at all because it’s kind of awkward on the tongue. I just say “What’s the address”?
Now that I think of it, I do that too. I don’t think I’ve used “you are ell” regularly since the mid/late 90s.
I once had a physics professor who pronounced the name of Jupiter’s moon Io as “eye-zero”. He was not an astronomer.
I say “you are ell”. Why wouldn’t you? I mean, you don’t pronounce USA as “ooh-suh” do you?
**Do people really pronounce URL as “earl”
**
Wow - that would be kinda…weird.
I’m not buying your analogy. You say PIN, CAT scan, SCSI (“scuzzy”), SQL is often “sequel,” etc. Why not “earl” for “URL”? I don’t say it this way, but it’s perfectly sensible.
I say “pin” and “cat scan” because people would look at me like I’m crazy if I pronounced out the letters. Which is the way I would like at someone who pronounces URL as “earl” 
Okay, it was bad analogy, I admit. Still, it begs the question: why are some acronyms pronounced as a word, while others are pronounced as letters?
To be pedantic, by definition, all acronyms are pronounced as words. If it’s not pronounced as a word, it’s an initialism.
These are the same people who think SQL is pronounced “sequel.”
Now that’s just going too far.
All of my computer techy friends make fun of me when I say gee-eye-eff (spelling it out). They snort, then say, “Um you mean JIFF.”
Uh, that sounds dumb as fuck to me.
And earl? EARL? Who does that? So weird.
Seems like Cecil does. The Weird Earl’s section of the Straight Dope is a pun on “weird URLs.”
If it were supposed to be pronounced as letters, it would have periods. If a group of capital letters can be pronounced as a word, it should be. I’m having a hard time thinking of an exception.
There is one that seems like an exception, but it isn’t: I don’t say “sequel” for SQL. I’m fine with pronouncing acronyms as words (if they can be pronounced), but not cheating by adding in sounds that are completely nonexistent. None of the letters indicated contain or can make an * sound. “Squell” would be okay, but since that is not an accepted pronunciation, I stick with treating the acronym like an initialism, and pronounce it “ess-cue-ell.”
And I don’t get people saying jiff. That would be JIF. There are a lot of words that do not soften the G before I, so why soften the G and create ambiguity?
Also, Linux has a short I, because the Linus who created it pronounces his I with a short I.
Finally, I will not judge those of you who say you-are-ell, but I still think you should spell it U.R.L. if you’re going to do that, just like U.S.A. And definitely never write it in lowercase.
So in casual speech, to determine if something should be pronounced as a word or individual letters, we have to first determine whether or not we would use periods if we were writing it? And if we decide we wouldn’t use periods, we next have to determine if it can be pronounced as a word?
The first step seems too time consuming for casual conversations, and the second step is clearly subjective. If I determine at step one that I don’t use periods for USA, then if one person in the world believes that can be pronounced as a word, do I too have to pronounce it “oo-sah”? Or only if 51% of the world believes it can be pronounced as a word do I have to follow suit?
For the record, I pronounce it U-R-L, and I’ve not once heard it pronounced earl, so I hadn’t really given it much thought.
It used to bug me when people said “scuzzy”. (SCSI)
Yeah, but I loved the sound of the pronounciation of WYSIWYG.
(“wizzywig”)
I work for a well known Silicon Valley software developer. I hear “you are el” most often, “earl” less often, and “yurl” occasionally. Similarly, “guid” == “goo id” but also “gwid”.
I have never once heard anyone call it “earl”
I always call the UPS drive the “ups man” though
I really hope I’m not the only one who didn’t know that until now.
I have a friend who pronounced wi-fi as “wee fee.” At first I thought he was just being funny, but he says everyone he knows pronounces it like that. Makes me want to put my fist through the wall.