Re: OT: which article with abbr. ?

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

flash wrote:
> Y'all,
> Is there a best practice for using 'a' or 'an' with abbreviations?
> Example, is it 'a MTT' or 'an MTT', where MTT stands for mean transit time.
Have you ever come to the right place. I can tell you more than
you wanted to know about this.
First, what the "abbreviation" stands for is utterly immaterial.
What counts is how it's pronounced. If it starts with a vowel
sound, it takes 'an'; with a consonant sound, 'a'.
Second, it is well to distinguish between the various short forms
in the English language:
Abbreviations, properly so called, are vocalized as the words
they stand for: Mr. (pronounced Mister), Mrs. (pronounced Missus,
though it is technically an abbreviation of Mistress), hr
(pronounced hour).
Acronyms are formed (usually) from the first letters of each word
of a phrase and are pronounced as words: OPEC (pronounced
oh-pek), NATO (pronounced Nay-tow), RAM (pronounced just like the
word for a male sheep).
Initialisms are formed of the first letters of each word of a
phrase, but (usually because it is impossible to make a "word" of
them) are pronounced letter by letter: CPU (pronounced
see-pee-you), NAACP (pronounced en-double ay-see-pee), USSR.
Sometimes a short form will be an acronym (sometimes a rather
forced one) to the in crowd of a discipline and an initialism to
the outs. AWOL is "ay double-you oh ell" to civilians, but ay-wol
to the military. Geeks always say "scuzzy" (or sometimes "sexy")
for SCSI, and I think that's caught on more generally, but there
was a time when clueless dweebs said ess-see-ess-eye.
All these patterns of pronunciation are important, because how
such a term is pronounced determines the form of the indefinite
article. (Is MIT verbalized as 'mit', em-eye-tee, or 'mean
transit time'? Only if the second would it take 'an'.)
Not only the indefinite article. The pattern also determines
whether or not such a term takes a definite article or not. An
abbreviation takes one or not, depending on what the word it
stands for does: normally, Mrs. Jones, but "she's a Mrs., not a
Ms." An acronym normally does not take a definite article: NATO
held maneuvers, OPEC raised oil prices. But an initialism does:
The US levied an embargo, the CPU was fried.
That last pattern reflects the one that holds for proper names
absolute, and "proper names" that contain a generic element. Compare:
The United States did thus and so, America has never been invaded.
England was bombed, the UK sent an expeditionary force.
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx