Re: A or An?

["Ridder, Fred" <F -dot- Ridder -at- DIALOGIC -dot- COM>]

Sorry to disappoint you, but this is nothing new, nor is it improper.
According to _Webser's Ninth New Collegiate_:
     "Before unstressed or weakly stressed syllables with initial _h_,
     both _a_ and _an_ are used in writing <_a_ historic> <_an_
     historic> but in speech _an_ is more frequent whether /h/ is
     pronounced or not."
Just think for a moment about how unnaturally one has to empahsize
the "a" when speaking the phrase "a historic" vs. "an historic".
To my ear, that empahss seems totally at odds with the use of the
indefinite article.  The use of "a" vs. "an" is supposed to be governed
by the ear rather than by spelling rules.  I'm not normally a big fan
of the slow-talking Mr. Rather, but I do agree with him on this issue.

Fred Ridder  (mailto:f -dot- ridder -at- dialogic -dot- com)
Senior Technical Writer
Dialogic Corporation, Parsippany, NJ

And to keep our marketing people happy:
Get the Dialogic Edge at:  http://www.dialogic.com


>-----Original Message-----
>From:  Paul Allen Rice [SMTP:PaulRice -at- BROADCAST -dot- NET]
>Sent:  Friday, July 04, 1997 3:29 AM
>Subject:       Re: A or An?
>
>On StarDate 07:48 AM 7/3/97 -0700, the following TechnoBabble was spewed
>forth from Tamminga, Ernie:
>>The first part of Will's suggestion is good.
>>The second part doesn't work. If it were, then you would also say...
>>
>>"In the phrase 'I want a/an orange wagon', use 'a' instead of 'an'
>>because the item that's being referred to is the wagon, and not
>>'orange'".
>>
>>Doesn't work that way. The article has to agree with the word it
>>immediately precedes, not with the downstream noun that follows however
>>many frontloaded adjectives there may be.
>>
>
>I'll agree with the rephrasing...  that was my first thought.
>
>But I want to know when it became acceptable to say "an historic occasion"?
>
>That has been bugging me ever since the first time I heard it on the
>evening news by none other than Mr. Proper himself, Dan Rather.
>
>Paul Rice
>PaulRice -at- Broadcast -dot- Net
>

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