Ashley Campbell's Writer's Log
An honest mistake about a hotel
(on using a or an)
A few weeks ago, I got an email from a client asking for help. “Help me clear this up around the office,” he started. “Is it a UK company or an UK company? Is there any difference if UK is not abbreviated?”
He and his colleagues shared a common confusion about when to use “a” or “an”, which I cleared up very quickly.
You probably remember being taught that "a" tacks an “n” on the end to become “an” if the next word starts with a vowel. And you vaguely remember being taught something about when the next word begins with an “h” — you can’t quite remember what, but you figure if you always use “an” before a word beginning with “h” (an hotel, for example) you can’t go wrong.
Well, yes, you can, actually.
A or an before vowels
First things first: yes, you do use “an” before words beginning with a vowel – but it’s the sound of a vowel, not its presence on the page, that matters. “A” becomes an “an” to make the next word easier to say — it’s much more difficult to say “a angle” than “an angle” — not simply because someone thought it would be a good rule to have.
So, I told my client, it’s “a UK company” and, in this case, it’s also “a United Kingdom company”. Why? Because “UK” and “United” both begin with the sound of a “y” — yew — and “y” is a consonant. If he was talking about an unexceptional company, the answer would have been different, because “unexceptional” starts with a vowel sound.
If you look back a few paragraphs, you’ll also see I wrote an “n” and an “h”, because “n” is pronounced “en” and “h” is pronounced “aitch” — in other words they both begin with a vowel sound and therefore both take "an".
A or an with “h”
And so on to the next confusion — that you have to use “an” before words beginning with h. Well, no, you don’t have to. And mostly you shouldn’t.
The confusion is there because sometimes the “h” at the start of the word is silent, and so the first sound is a vowel; in that case, use “an” — an honour, an heir, an honest mistake.
But mostly we pronounce the “h” at the beginning of the word, and so “a” will do. A hand, a hippy, a hotel, a helpful Writer’s Log.
© Ashley Campbell, 2010 |
