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Subject:Re: Articles with Initialisms From:Katharine Woods <kathw -at- FIREFOX -dot- CO -dot- UK> Date:Fri, 23 Feb 1996 17:10:16 GMT
Beverley Parks wrote:
> Dan, you are absolutely correct. The problem, however,
> especially with SME, is that not everyone says it the same way.
> As you do, I say "ess-em-eee", so would naturally write "an
> SME". Other people pronounce it as "smee", so they naturally
I've had this problem when documenting files by extension names. For
example, ".INI" and ".EXE" files. Some people pronounce these as
"dot ini" and "dot exe" (requiring an "a"), others as "ini" and "exe"
(requiring an "an") and both groups get upset if the filename
extension is preceded by the inappropriate article.
Of course, this might just be a British thing. I've never heard
heard anyone talk about "period exe" or "period ini" files. :-)
Katharine Woods
kathw -at- firefox -dot- co -dot- uk
