My manager gave me an edit that completely floored me. Am I losing my mind or is she?
Here’s the sentence:
I think it should be a, the boss thinks it should be an.
I’ve checked out a couple of my handbooks and can’t find a rule… If you have a cite, that would be very helpful. Especially if I’m right.
Your boss is wrong. The word “an” is, and always has been, used exclusively before words that begin with a vowel sound, no exceptions:
An advantage
An hour
An opening
‘An’ is used when the word following it is pronouced with an initial vowel sound (cite) so:
An apple
An orange
An opportunity
A car
A sausage
A great opportunity
There are a few words that begin with a consonant, but it is silent or pronouced as a vowel, so in some places:
An herb (when herb is pronounced urb)
An hospital (when it is pronounced 'ospital)
A google search of
“an great” grammar
turns up surprisingly many grammar-oriented sites using this exact phrase.
I can’t find anything (yet) that explains any kind of exception that makes “an great” (which just sounds hideous!) acceptable, or even correct. Still looking.
Cecil wept.
Google search: Results 1 - 10 of about 39,600 for " an great"
Finding an Great Dane Breeder
Tomato Strainer - an great tool for home cooks
What an GREAT ride.
Does anyone know of an great theater currently showing Titanic
Eastern Mediterranean Turkey - An great climate and some …
Granted, some of them were acutally Chinese (Xi’an Great Mosque), but still. Dang.
TellMeImNotCrazy
:mad: :mad: :mad:
Sorry **Ethilrist ** 
OK, looking up “great” in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, all examples that include an indefinite article use “a” instead of “an”. I don’t know if that’s a good enough cite or not.
It’s the “Internet Idiocy” exception. There are many many places on the Internet where the normal rules of grammar, or even logic and common sense, do not apply.
There is no circumstance that would make “an great” an acceptable usage in English. Gazelle’s manager’s education has evidently been sadly incomplete. It is difficult for me to imagine how anyone could believe that that was correct.
[QUOTE=Ethilrist]
Google search: Results 1 - 10 of about 39,600 for " an great"
QUOTE]
39,600 people are either more stupid than dirt or they don’t bother proofreading.
I would refuse to make that edit, Gazelle. I’d do it in a nice way but I’d REFUSE all the same. Has she told you why she thinks she’s right? Ask her and see what she says.
See, I just neglected to proofread and now some bozo out there is going to take my post as “proof” that instead of using quotation marks like all thinking people do, it’s perfectly correctly to quote people by putting
[quote]
in front of their statements.
Tell your boss no. In writing. And copy in her boss.
'cept, of course, if the vowel sound is a “long u” :
a unicorn
a unified field theory
a uintatherium
but
an umbrella, because that’s a “short u”
I get the impression that most of those google hits for “an great” are just times when the writer first wrote “an excellent,” then decided to change that word, but forgot to change the article.
Gazelle, what’s your boss’s reason for “an”? When I read the OP, I thought he must be thinking that “an” would be correct because the noun it goes with is “advantage.” In fact, I would bet money on it. Of course, this is wrong, as every native English speaker who is at least three years old can tell you.
You guys roooooooock!
FWIW, I think my bossola got confused because the noun starts with a vowel.
No, those words begin with the “y” sound, which is a consonant.
What about X words? “a x-ray” occurs 24,000 times on google. “an x-ray” occurs 609,000 times. X-File is prefaced by “an” far more than “a” too, and neither X-Ray nor X-File begin with a vowel sound…
Yes they do!
Although they’re spelled with consonants, the sound at the beginning of those words is a short e. Again, the rule is not based on how words are spelled, it’s based on how they’re pronounced. “Uniform” is pronounced with a beginning “y” sound, so it takes “a” as its indefinite article, and “x-ray” starts with a vowel sound, so it takes “an.”
“An x-ray” is correct, since “ex” starts with a vowel sound. Remember, it’s always the pronounciation, not the spelling, that determines whether you use “a” or “an.”
It’s the sound made at the beginning of the word that determines the rule, not just if it is a consonant or vowel. Another similar situation would be if the word is an acronym where the first letter starts with a vowel sound, such as “an SCM engineer” or “an HTML editor.”
Tell your boss he is a idot (16,500 references found for "a idiot).