RE: "a SQL sever" vs "an SQL server" Horses mouth...
> At 5:01 PM -0400 9/22/05, Art Campbell wrote:
>> abbreviations and acronyms do, indeed, represent the rootI don't think so.
When you read an address out loud, you don't pronounce St. as "sssst"
or Rd. as "Rrrrd,"
you say the word the abbreviation represents -- "street" or "road."
And in this case, "represents" is the operative verb because
>>phrase or words. Therefore the article should agree with the
>>root phrase or words.
>>
>>> sound.Art
On 9/22/05, Odile Sullivan-Tarazi <odile -at- mindspring -dot- com> wrote:
The article must align with the abbreviated form, not the phrase the
form stands in for, because the form of the article is determined by
Remember this is Microsoft. They bastardized SQL so that they can be
special. This is a company's marketing department setting grammar rules.
Scott
My point is that if the abbreviation is pronounced "sequel" (that is, as an acronym), then the indefinite article preceding must be "a" and that if the abbreviation is pronounced "ess-kyoo-ell" (as an initialism), then the article is instead "an," a point I am not alone in making.
I have no particular desire to enforce one pronunciation over another. It is simply a feature of English that the indefinite article behaves this way with respect to the letter "s": it takes one form with the _sound_ of the letter (as in a word) and another with the _name_ of the letter (as in a recitation of the alphabet). "S" is one of a handful of consonants for which this is true.
Art's argument was that the article does not match the pronunciation of the acronym or initialism, but rather the underlying phrase. He was considering, in his examples, the type of abbreviation for which this is true: abbreviations such as "ms." (for manuscript, not the mode of address), "St.," "Ave.," "Ln.," or "Mr." But this principle does not hold true for initialisms or acronyms, which have a pronunciation distinct from the underlying phrase.
In other words, while it is true that you would pronounce "Ave." (in the right context) as "Avenue," you would never see the abbreviation "SQL" and pronounce it "Structured Query Language."
Odile
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References:
Re: "a SQL sever" vs "an SQL server": From: Odile Sullivan-Tarazi
RE: "a SQL sever" vs "an SQL server" Horses mouth...: From: Rochelle McAndrews
RE: "a SQL sever" vs "an SQL server" Horses mouth...: From: quills
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