A or An With Acronyms
Biztip
Reader: “I would like to know whether to use ‘a’ or ‘an’ before
an acronym. For example, I have seen both ‘a Law
Society of Upper Canada form’ and ‘an LSUC
form.’ Are they both written correctly?”
Biztip
Response: Before I begin to deal with this issue, let’s
discuss acronyms versus initialisms. An acronym is an abbreviation
you can pronoun as an actual word.
Examples
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
Hazmat (Hazardous materials)
OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries)
Initialisms
are abbreviations that you pronounce as a string of letters.
Examples
FAQs (frequently asked questions)
FYI (for your information)
PBS (Public Broadcasting Service)
In school,
you learned to put a definite article, “the,” or
an indefinite article, “a” or “an” before
a noun. You were also told to put “an” in front
of a noun beginning with a vowel and “a” in
front of a noun starting with a consonant: a meeting, an
emergency.
But remember
the exceptions I often talk about with regard to the English
language. When it comes to abbreviations and initialisms,
you have to ask what is the first sound – not the
first letter. “An” is used when the first sound
is a vowel, “a” when the first sound is a consonant.
Examples
An LCBO bottle (vowel start — ell)
A LAN connection (consonant start)
An MBA degree (vowel start — em)
An FYI notice (vowel start — ehf)
Therefore,
both “a Law Society of Upper Canada form” and
its abbreviated form “an LSUC form” are correct.
Don’t
you just love English! Next week, we’ll look at when
you put “the” in front of an abbreviation and
when you don’t.
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