Summary: A or An

[Chris Betterton <ChrisB -at- SELECTST -dot- COM>]

On 3/7/97, I posted:

> I have the following phrase in a topic:
>
>       "... with a/an .eel extension."
>
> The question is, should it be A or AN? Grammatically speaking,
> I would guess you ignore the dot and use AN. But if you say it out
> loud, you might well say "with a dot eel extension", in which case A
> sounds right.
>
> When I read it, something in me twitches if I have AN. What do you
> all think?

The majority of people suggested I rephrase it. Quite a few people went
with the gramatically correct "an", but others went with "a".

I think the a/an choice was mainly based on the way people deal with a
sentence like this in their mind. Some people mentally say the dot (myself
included) and others don't. This tends to dictate what feels right for you.
As different things feel right for different people, I've avoided the whole
problem by rephrasing (it now reads "... with the extension .eel").

Thanks for your help.

Chris Betterton
Select Software Tools Ltd.
chrisb -at- selectst -dot- com
http://www.selectst.com

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