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Okay, sorry about that. I've always treated "SQL" as an initiaiism and
never encountered the "sequel" pronunciation, so I didn't realize that
was the issue.
-----Original Message-----
From: Odile Sullivan-Tarazi [mailto:odile -at- mindspring -dot- com]
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 1:33 PM
Subject: RE: "a SQL sever" vs "an SQL server"
But that's the whole issue with this one: pronunciation. Some
communities pronounce it "sequel," which means it would take "a." In
other words, some communities treat it as a bona fide acronym, some
as an initialism.
It's like the difference between (to take a general example)
pronouncing "MADD" as "mad" or as "M-A-D-D."
Granted, there's no vowel in "SQL," would it would not be the first
set of letters lacking an essential vowel to be given word-like
pronunciation.
Odile
At 12:02 PM -0400 9/23/05, Downing, David wrote:
>FWIW, our policy regarding a/an and initialisms is to go by the SOUND
of
>the first letter. In this case, since it's pronounced "Ess," we'd use
>"an."
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