An holistic view? Or a holistic view?
 

Which is it, please?
Checked dictionary but it was no help, and MSWord doesn't like the former, preferring the latter.....

Either.

"a" is more common now.I met an Hooray Henry or I met a Hooray Henry. A every time?


Just guessing mind :)

dl

H is a consonant so should be used with an ‘A’.

However, as it is silent in some instances you use it with an ‘AN’.:

A Holistic practitioner (you pronounce the ‘H’)
An honest idiot (you don’t pronounce the ‘H’)

That's so much better than my post :thumb:

dl

You say 'otel, I say hotel.

In formal writing use a hotel, but if writing dialogue then an hotel would suffice.

Or think of a word with the same meaning without the complications. That's what I used to do in French, l'hotel was always easier to get right than remembering whether it was le or la :)

Admittedly I'm talking about people who pronounce things properly ;)

If the H is sounded, then you use A; when it's not, you use An. Simple as that, really.:)

Cheers lads...a holistic view will be taken:)

Only use "an" when followed by a vowel ... an elephant, a rhino.

TX.

Edit - some exceptions as per boxst post :o

What about Widdecombe? That starts with a consonant :)

BUT

You will often see "An Historic Occasion" which seems to be accepted.. dl

Really? That even looks wrong.

'A' works if you clearly pronounce the 'H' - but if you're being lazy and don't then 'an' fits but is grammatically incorrect.

Some people make a special case of "AN Hotel". They make the argument that the modern English pronunciation of hotel, with the 'H' aspirate, is just a recent affectation and that the proper pronunciation is 'otel, as in the French .

That works for me.

:lol1:

I think that you got the order of the words wrong there:

"Some special people make a case of ... "

Thought of this thread today while typing an email:

"We are currently in the middle of a RFQ", is what I typed. Is that correct Oh Scoobynets Fonts of Wisdom? :)

It is theoretically correct, but for some reason it isn't.

The best I could find to explain it was if you have an acronym, depending on the letter it starts with:

vowel-sounding letters (take "an"):A E F H I L M N O R S X


consonant-sounding letters (take "a"):B C D G J K P Q T U V W Y Z

a norange* ;)










*QI

Cheers. I thought so, but it didn't read right that way, so although I wasn't happy with it, I sent it anyway!!:eek:

Asif

RFQ is not an acronym it is an abbreviation. An abbreviation is pronounced in full as R-F-Q.

An acronym is an abbreviation that spells a word, e.g. BRAKE, that is pronounced brake, not B-R-A-K-E.

Traditionally an acronym had to be a proper word like RAM or PLUTO, nowadays it seems that anything pronouncable, e.g. UNESCO, NASA, is considered to be an acronym by some.

So for R-F-Q consider the R which should be preceded by "an" are-eff-queue.

Thank you. I should clearly have gone with my gut on that one!

Asif

It is a Request for Quote?

I reckon it depends whether you want to impress others or not!

Les