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I totally agree with you, Mary. Before using an acronym you should use the
appropriate article. Before an S, you use "an" because you would spell "S"
as "ess." Before an E you use "an." And before any other consonant that
sounds like it begins with a vowel, you use "an" instead of A. I have
argued with many engineers over this issue, but most conflict comes from
those that speak another language other than English as their native
language. English is definately a difficult language to understand. Rules
are not specific and do not always apply. Life was never meant to be easy.
Jenny Fornaca
At 2:49 PM 6/21/94 -0700, Mary Bull wrote:
>Glen Accardo,glen -at- SOFTINT -dot- COM,Internet asks about which article to use with
>SQL. I guess I'm from the conservative side when it comes to acronyms. I've
>always regarded acronyms as strings of letters and not words. Which means I'd
>use "an" with "SQL". If the speaker wants to combine the letters into a
>pseudo-word, fine. But the written text should reflect acronyms just being
>letter combinations.
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>Mary Bull
>Dayna Communications
>Soreson Research Park
>849 West Levoy Drive
>Salt Lake City, UT 84020
>801/269-7224
>Mary_Bull -at- dayna -dot- com
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
