A vs An in front of an acronym beginning with L?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Robyn Richards wondered: <<I've had a quick look for usage of "a" vs  
"an" in front of an acronym beginning with a vowel sound, for example  
a (an?) LSP. It seems there is conflicting information. I just wanted  
to get a quick poll on what people are using.>>

The information should not be conflicting because there is no debate  
about the rule, but the interpretations for each specific case often  
vary. First off, you need to distinguish correctly between  
abbreviations (any shortening of a word, including "avg." for  
average), initialisms (abbreviations such as "IBM", formed from the  
first letter of each word), and true acronyms (initialisms such as  
"laser" that are pronounced as words).

The rule for "a" vs. "an" is the same in each case: if you pronounce  
the abbreviation with an initial vowel, use "an". The harder part is  
deciding when something is pronounced as a word, and when it is  
pronounced letter by letter. If the string of letters is  
unpronouncable, it's easy to decide, but even then, many words aren't  
clear. For example, the SCSI interface is pronounced as individual  
letters by those who aren't familiar with it (an ess-cee-ess-eye  
interface), but as a word  by geeks ("scuzzy", though some early  
adopters tried to get "sexy" adopted).

In such cases, the only way to be sure is to be intimately familiar  
with the way the abbreviation is pronounced by those who use it a lot  
in their professional discourse. In your case, I'd ask your subject- 
matter experts whether they say "ell-ess-pee" or "lisp", then apply  
the standard rule.

--------------------------------------------------------
Geoff Hart (www.geoff-hart.com)
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
--------------------------------------------------------
***Now available***  _Effective onscreen editing_
(http://www.geoff-hart.com/books/eoe/onscreen-book.htm)

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