Re: Splitting hairs. Was Re: splitting camel case?

[David Haley <dchaley@...>]

On this day of 1-14-2006 7:26 PM, Michael Abbott saw fit to scribe:
> On Sat, 2006-01-14 at 22:12 -0500, Rici Lake wrote:
>   
> > An URL? As in http://www.william-le-gros.gov/, the last URL of York?
> >
> > Maybe I'm just behind the times, pronounciation-wise, but I pronounce 
> > it "you are ell", so it's a URL to me.
> >     
>
> Shouldn't it still strictly be "an URL" even if you pronounce it that
> way?  That is, you'd say "Give me an ETA".  I thought that it might be
> because URL sounds like it has a silent 'y' but that also isn't the case
> for something like "I'll be there in an hour".
>   

If you pronounce it "you are ell", it should be "a URL", not an URL. The 
'y' isn't silent, else it'd be "oo are ell" in which case you'd use "an" 
before it. The 'a' vs. 'an' rule doesn't have to do strictly with the 
following word having a vowel, but with how you pronounce it. I don't 
know the technical term for that, though...

--
~David-Haley
http://david.the-haleys.org