Timeline for Do you use "a" or "an" before acronyms / initialisms?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
22 events
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| S Apr 6, 2022 at 13:04 | history | suggested | Snostorp | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Easier to be sure which is which, (acronym) vs (initialism)
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| Apr 6, 2022 at 11:48 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Apr 6, 2022 at 13:04 | |||||
| Aug 11, 2021 at 16:39 | comment | added | DLeh |
Interesting scenario I thought of today is that for certain letters the pronunciation itself would be different even if it's only an initialism and never an acronym. Something like HTTP as an initialism for american english would be 'aitch' ttp and thus an HTTP request, but for some accents of British english it could be pronounced 'haitch' ttp and thus a HTTP request. I think the former would the more common pronunciation but I'm american so what do I know.
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| Apr 28, 2021 at 12:45 | comment | added | James |
I think your first sentence is a perfect basis of what to use. Perhaps adding the word "official" in the sentence would resolve the difficulties from people using acronym vs initialism. "It depends on whether the abbreviation is officially an acronym or an initialism" - i.e. if "FAQ" is officially an initialism then "an" is simply the correct thing to use.
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| Oct 29, 2019 at 11:24 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | Perhaps you could add supporting evidence. That's a lot of credit for what would now be seen as an unsatisfactory answer (though almost certainly correct). | |
| Sep 6, 2017 at 1:04 | comment | added | Vincent McNabb | @BadHorsie Nobody as far as I know. I've head it pronounced /fæk/ which rhymes with "back" | |
| Sep 5, 2017 at 10:09 | comment | added | BadHorsie | Who on Earth pronounces FAQ as "fake"? Never heard that in my life. | |
| Dec 18, 2016 at 16:34 | comment | added | Mark Reed | CD is clearly an initialism; if it were a word, it would be pronounced something like "could" or "cud" or "kid". But we say "see-dee". That has no effect on the article to use, however, because both "see" and "c*d" start with a consonant sound rather than a vowel sound. "ROM" by itself is more interesting. In my experience it is usually pronounced like a word, "rom" /rɔm/ (phonetic vowel value depending on dialect), so you would say "a ROM". But if you pronounce it as the individual letters "ar-oh-em", it' would be "an ROM". | |
| Jun 19, 2015 at 2:37 | comment | added | chharvey | This could be a great answer; admittedly, one that I agree with. However from my POV it seems like mere opinion. Some citations to hard references would make it even better (and would earn it an upvote). | |
| May 27, 2015 at 18:53 | comment | added | Andrew Falanga | @Jay I found this thread because of a code review I'm working through (I work as a software engineer) and acronyms are just part of life in this business. It's interesting to learn the distinction between acronym and initialism. However, I thought I'd toss out that I've heard SQL pronounced squeal as well. :-) | |
| Aug 20, 2014 at 10:17 | comment | added | painfulenglish | (Not sure if this warrants a separate question.) In scientific papers, it is common to define abbreviations just to save space. For example, "semimetal" would be abbreviated by SM in a given paper, but is not a universal abbreviation comparable to CD-ROM. After being corrected by proof-readers regarding the use of a/an many times, I have come to accept that it should be "an SM" even though in my head I replace SM by semimetal while reading. Would you say that the above rules apply in the same way to such abbreviations? (To my confusion, in my last paper, the editor insisted on "a SM"). | |
| Jul 14, 2014 at 19:36 | comment | added | Cruncher | @mgb Amazingly. If I just "a SQL database" I will automatically pronounce it sequel in my head without even thinking about it. Using "an" I will automatically spell it out in my head. | |
| Apr 6, 2011 at 4:23 | comment | added | mgb | Similar problem with SQL. If you pronounce it es-queue-ell then it's "an SQL database", if you pronounce it sequel then it's a SQL database | |
| Aug 20, 2010 at 4:04 | vote | accept | Dori | ||
| Aug 20, 2010 at 4:04 | comment | added | Dori | It appears that the answer is: "there is no definitive answer to this question." Not exactly what I'd hoped, but as this was the only answer that responded to the question I asked, I guess that makes it the best. | |
| Aug 18, 2010 at 14:56 | comment | added | nohat | The whole “ acronyms must be pronounced as words” distinction appears to be one that is only made by dictionaries. From what I can tell, any abbreviation that is made from initials is called an acronym if it is pronounced differently from what the initials stand for. | |
| Aug 17, 2010 at 0:12 | comment | added | Vincent McNabb | @Dori - yes. Whichever way you write it, it will trip up some readers. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) lists two results for "a FAQ", and one result for "an FAQ", so "a FAQ" is probably more common. Google also shows a preference for "a FAQ". | |
| Aug 16, 2010 at 21:15 | comment | added | Dori | @Vincent: what about in written English? Let's say I'm writing something where—while I know which I use—I don't know if the reader says "fack" or "eff-ay-que." Will there always be readers who think I was wrong? | |
| Aug 16, 2010 at 9:24 | comment | added | Matt Hamilton | +1 (more if I could) for expaining that acronyms are pronounced as words. You'd be surprised how many people don't know that (and actually argue that it's not true). | |
| Aug 16, 2010 at 9:15 | history | edited | Vincent McNabb | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
added 106 characters in body; added 4 characters in body
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| Aug 16, 2010 at 9:08 | comment | added | Vincent McNabb | Thanks for the teaching :-) Indeed there is a difference in the strict sense :-) So is CD-ROM an acronym or an initialism? | |
| Aug 16, 2010 at 8:15 | history | answered | Vincent McNabb | CC BY-SA 2.5 |