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October 27

A or an before abbreviations?

It's usually clear when to say a or an: a NASA, an FBI, a UK, an EU. (eg, 'an' before a vowel sound, 'a' before a consonant sound) But the following trip me up: is it an FAC or a FAC (as some people read 'a featured article candidate', a/an HGV (heavy goods vehicle) and LGV (large goods vehicle), a/an NI (National Insurance) number, a/an MP (member of parliament), and especially, a/an SNES, which even discusses it within the article. It doesn't really matter in informal writing but it really matters when you have to write in a formal way. Is there anyway to fix this problem? JuniperChill (talk) 13:31, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Short answer to the general case is "no", although I'm sure some publisher style guides recommend one practice (acronym, initialism, read as full expansion) over others. It doesn't seem like we do, according to MOS:ACRO. For article development, I suppose the answer as usual is "follow the sources".

This was actually discussed just a few months back at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations § "a" or "an" (Summer 2024), with no conclusion. Folly Mox (talk) 13:50, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations/Archive 4 § "a RFC" vs "an RFC" (2012 & 2013). Folly Mox (talk) 13:58, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking people who type 'a RfC' means that they read it as 'a request for comment'. I tend to say 'an RfC' because I do say it letter by letter (like a BBC). However, I tend to write 'a LU', because I say it as 'a London Underground...'. But with a/an before HGV, is confusing as it has to do with the Brits on how to say the letter H. Its mixed, as some say /hei-ch/ rather than /ei-ch/. For example, this gov.uk website says both 'a HGV' and 'an HGV' in the same page. And a yt channel called Luke C in a HGV. JuniperChill (talk) 16:12, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's interesting to see the evolution of how people pronounce initialisms as terms become more commonplace: few people nowadays would read LOL as "laughing out loud" rather than /ell oh ell/ or even /la:l/; I've also heard BTW, WTF, TBH, JMO, and TL;DR pronounced as initialisms in spoken conversation. OTOH, some initialisms tend still to be read in expanded form: I've yet to hear anyone say /en gee ell/ for NGL instead of "not gonna lie", or /tee aye ell/ for TIL rather than "today I learned".

Of course, some acronyms become so accepted as regular words that pronouncing them otherwise would just confuse the listener: if I heard someone say /are ey dee ey are/ for radar or /ell ey ess ee are/ for laser, I'd assume they were spelling it out because their dog associates it with treats or something. Folly Mox (talk) 16:47, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I assume JMO is "just my opinion"? Never encountered it before. The initialisms containing W gain syllables compared to the things they're supposed to abbreviate, so this is a bizarre development. Card Zero (talk) 08:52, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Assumption correct; appears undocumented both here and at wikt:. Folly Mox (talk) 17:28, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion it depends on how the abbreviation is pronounced, which may be speaker-dependent. If people say /əˈspɒf/, you write "a SPOF". If they say /ənˈɛs.piː.oʊˌɛf/, you write "an SPOF". --Lambiam 17:15, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

But then, some people completely avoid the use of "an". For them, it's a apple, a orange, a ectoplasm, a irritation, and a utterly stupid way of talking. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 17:56, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"The law is a ass" occurs in the mid-19th-century in Dickens, but you're right about the recent rise of this... AnonMoos (talk) 18:06, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This sounds related to the phenomenon of modern Chinese speakers eschewing the prescribed system of Chinese classifiers (measure words) for the generic 個; ge in all cases. Folly Mox (talk) 17:32, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's dialectical. There are different ways of avoiding the clash between vowels. Some use schwa for a but begin apple with a glottal stop, others instead pronounce a as a diphthong /ei/. Either way, you get a consonant-like transition between the article and the noun. — kwami (talk) 23:03, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]