An English question...
Jon Moulton
Friday, 22 May 2009 17:23 UTC
I am fairly certain that I can find an opinion here (happy, so happy for that).
When choosing between “a” or “an” preceding an acronym, should I base my choice on the initial letter of the acronym or the initial letter of its expanded form?
Choices:
an mRNA (an em ar en ay)
a mRNA (because the expanded form is “a messenger ribonucleic acid”)
I think that neither is wrong but I am curious what others prefer.
Thanks!
Updated 22 May 2009 17:24 UTC
-
Replies
-
One pragmatic response is to choose on the basis of how one would say it. But as you point out, I am sure there is no “right” answer!
-
My gut reaction, definitely ‘an’ because the reader stumbles with ‘a’, as if in reading silently we are in fact readiing internaly out loud. So I checked, and here’s supporting guidance: http://ethnicity.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/a.html
-
Thank you both for your thoughts.
Maxine, I think the fundamental problem I am working on is whether it is best to assume that someone will expand the acronym while reading the text (that is, when mRNA is written the speaker might say “messenger ribonucleic acid”). When reading scientific prose aloud I will sometimes expand acronyms and sometimes not, but if I follow my inconsistent style of reading aloud I will write in an inconsistent style.
Ruth, the page you linked was helpful, not least in demonstrating that I am not struggling with this alone. The prescription offered, determining use of “a” vs. “an” by considering whether the acronym (spoken as an acronym) starts with a vowel, is a reasonable approach which will solve my problem with maintaining consistency. If someone reading aloud wishes to expand an acronym, the onus is on the speaker to modify the form of the article as appropriate.
-
There is a subjective element to whether one would “say” an acronym as its letters or as if it were a word, as you point out, Jon. At Nature we develop a house style for these matters, and I expect other journals do, too. I don’t think there is any “right” answer, though. And in a busy journal office the house style is probably not applied with 100 per cent accuracy, and would only be captured in the style guide for common phrases. We’d expect subeditors to apply the general rule outlined here, but I am sure there are individual variations.
-
Nature editorial policies probably don’t follow American rules, but here is what the American Medical Association says about this (from 10th edition of AMA Manual of Style):
“The article ‘a’ is used before the aspirate ‘h’ (eg, ‘a’ historic occasion) and nonvocalic ‘y’ (eg, ‘a’ ubiquitous organism). Abbreviations and acronyms are preceded by ‘a’ or ‘an’ according to the sound following (eg, ‘a’ UN resolution, ‘an’ HMO plan).” p. 412
In other words, whether you use ‘a’ or ‘an’ depends on how you pronounce the acronym. I believe in British English ‘h’ is not aspirate, so this gets complicated.
Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition) says this as well:
“The indefinite article ‘a,’ not ‘an,’ is used in American English before words beginning with a pronounced ‘h.’)”
They then apply this specifically to abbreviations:
“Before an abbreviation, a numeral, or a symbol, the use of ‘a’ or ‘an’ depends on how the term is pronounced. In the first example below, MS would be pronounced ‘em ess’; in the second, it would be pronounced ‘manuscript’:
an MS treatment (a treatment for multiple sclerosis)
a MS in the National Library
an NBC anchor
a CBS anchor
a URL
an @ sign
an 800 number" (p. 289)Hope that’s helpful.
-
Thanks Diana,
From your post:
Before an abbreviation, a numeral, or a symbol, the use of ‘a’ or ‘an’ depends on how the term is pronounced. In the first example below, MS would be pronounced ‘em ess’; in the second, it would be pronounced ‘manuscript’:
an MS treatment (a treatment for multiple sclerosis)
a MS in the National LibraryThis is exactly the problem that started me on the path of seeking advice. The treatment they suggest seems inconsistent. How can a writer predict whether a reader will choose to expand an acronym or not? Based on my previous tentative conclusion, I would use “an” before each of these examples and leave it up to the reader to change the article to “a” if the reader chooses to expand the acronym. So far, that’s my plan and I am sticking to it; to do as the Chicago manual suggests is to embark on the guided tour of chaos. (All right, perhaps I shouldn’t get worked up about this, it’s just an indefinite article.)
-
Life can be so indefinite sometimes!
(Hope this is an OK response…) -
Hi Jon, I see your point, I guess the idea is just to take your best guess what the reader would say on reading it. It’s true that this is ambiguous, but perhaps it is less so with very technical terms, which researchers in a particular field probably tend to all pronounce alike. Another flaw with this is that it assumes that when we read silently we are essentially reading aloud in our heads (if that makes sense), but not everyone actually reads this way.
Also, there are acronyms pronounced as acronyms – i.e., each letter pronounced – aitch-eye-vee for “HIV” – and then there are acronyms that are pronounced as words. I read in one of those sources (forgot which) that “laser” originally stood for “light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation.” If someone is pronouncing “laser” as a word then they would say “a laser.” If someone were pronouncing the acronym, they’d say “an ell-ay-ess…” That’s not a great example ‘cus no one spells out laser anymore, but it’s an example where it would make a difference whether the word or the acronym were pronounced.
-
Wow. Thanks Diana, I had not considered acronyms pronounced as words (laser, NASA, RAM, SQuID, …) and this is another indefinite article decision with which the writer might struggle.
-
