Re: "a" versus "an" with an acronym

[John Bell <jbell -at- PARAGREN -dot- COM>]

Beth Agnew wrote:

> Yeah, when the pronunciation changes but the acronym doesn't.
> Case in point: SQL It could be Ess Cue Ell or See-quell depending
> on where it's used, or who's saying/thinking it. What fun!

SQL stands for Structured Query Language and the programmers here
pronounce it either as "SEQUEL" or "SQUIRREL". In conversation they
may say: "I wrote a SQUIRREL command to solve the problem." I checked
some books and discovered that the guy who invented SQL always insisted
in pronouncing the individual letters and evidently got angry with
anyone who pronounced it as SEQUEL or SQUIRREL. Thus in all of his books
he used "I wrote an SQL command...". I had to convince our programmers
that my use of "an SQL" in our documentation was correct, at least
according to the creator of SQL (C. J. Date)!

And of course, if you pronounce SQL as "SQUIRREL" or "SEQUEL"
then you can call it an acronym. If you pronounce it as "ess que ell"
then it is an abbreviation. I find it easier to just call them
all abbreviations than to sort out whether it is pronounceable or
not.

--- John Bell
    jbell -at- paragren -dot- com


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