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Subject:Subject: "a SQL sever" vs "an SQL server" From:Nandini G <nandini111 -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 23 Sep 2005 01:40:38 -0700 (PDT)
Audience! Audience! Audience!
That's what decides whether you use an 'a' or an 'an'!
If you are writing for engineers who lovingly address
this beast as "my sequel", you got it, you use an 'a'.
However, you will grind your teeth and write "an SQL
server" if you are writing a proposal in response to
an RFP from a company that wants "an SQL server" and
offered you two million dollars for a secure system.
I think every acronym has the potential of becoming a
word. If it has vowels between consonents, the process
is faster. Some acronyms are even designed to be words
right at inception. WHO and UNESCO come to mind. You
are more likely to read a headline titled: "A SARS
Scare is Spreading Across South America Like a Wild
Fire" and not think twice about it. However, until its
newer pronunciation becomes accepted universally, SQL
will always make readers pause and digest the article
in front of it because of the two ways in which it is
pronounced. Can you imagine people wanting to make an
"Exerox" copy or buying an "ksylinks" component?
My hat goes off to "U.S.", however! "United States of
America" transormed into U.S.A. and then morphed into
"U.S". Only us Americans can drop America to refer to
America! I don't know why USSR did not drop "SR" from
their name and (on the paper) annex US!
Guy, that was an excellent research paper on
initialisms, acronyms, and abbreviations!
An abbreviation consisting of the first letter or
letters of words in a
phrase (for example, IRS for Internal Revenue
Service), syllables or
components of a word (TNT for trinitrotoluene), or a
combination of
words and syllables (ESP for extrasensory perception)
and pronounced by
spelling out the letters one by one rather than as a
solid word.
=========================================
Encarta® World English Dictionary, North American
Edition
word made of initials pronounced separately: an
abbreviation made up of
initial letters that are all pronounced separately,
e.g. UN for United
Nations
=========================================
<snip>
the "world's longest initialism, according to the
Guinness Book of World Records is
NIIOMTPLABOPARMBETZHELBETRABSBOMONIMONKONOTDTEKHSTROMONT"
--GKH
SEiSV
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