I’ve always learned that you use the word “a” when the next word begins with a consonant and “an” when the next word begins with a vowel. Is it correct to say “A historic event”, or “An historic event”?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=315786&highlight=historic+pronunciation
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=250324&highlight=historic+pronunciation
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=49612&highlight=historic+pronunciation
There’s no firm answer - not least because there’s no firm rule about whether or not the H is silent.
The rule is actually to use “a” when the next word is pronounced with a consonant sound, and “an” when it’s pronounced with vowel sound (e.g., a house, an hour; a uniform, an unusual event).
“Historical” is stressed on the second syllable, which tends to lighten the pronunciation of the “h.” (“History” in contrast is stressed on the first syllable, so the “h” is clearer, and always takes “a.”) In some dialects the “h” in historical is essentially silent, so it takes an “an.” Other dialects pronounce the “h”, and use an “a.” Most American stylebooks and dictionaries seem to prefer the latter; however, the former is not technically incorrect.
I just said to my girlfriend “There’s two less people walking around”, and she interupted “two fewer people, not two less”. Is it in correct to say “two less people”?
I believe the correct thing to do is find a girlfriend that doesn’t interrupt you with petty corrections.
The standard rule is to use less when referring to discrete countable items and fewer when referring to collective quantities. An example from Theodore Bernstein’s The Careful Writer: “The building has less floor space than the Empire State, yet it contains no fewer than 1200 offices.”
However, fewer people bother with this fine distinction these days and you see the formal usage less and less than you used to.
Your example is correct but your description is backwards. Fewer goes with things you can count 1, 2, 3, etc. like offices. Less goes with things you measure like floor space.
I don’t understand what that means. Who is right? Are people “discreet countable items”?
Exapno got it backward. “Fewer” is for countable items, like people; “less” is for quantities of substance, like water.
“There’s less blood to go around, but that’s OK because there are fewer vampires.”
Yes, of course it does. :smack:
Although many people are indiscreet, pretty much everyone except for Siamese Twins is discrete.
discreet
1 : having or showing discernment or good judgment in conduct and especially in speech : PRUDENT; especially : capable of preserving prudent silence
2 : UNPRETENTIOUS, MODEST <the warmth and discreet elegance of a civilized home – Joseph Wechsberg>
3 : UNOBTRUSIVE, UNNOTICEABLE <followed at a discreet distance>
dis·crete
1 : constituting a separate entity : individually distinct
2 a : consisting of distinct or unconnected elements : NONCONTINUOUS b : taking on or having a finite or countably infinite number of values <discrete probabilities> <a discrete random variable>
It would be even more correct to say “There are…”
More in keeping with traditional English, certainly, however the spoken construction “there’s” to mean both “there is” and “there are” is well over 40 years old and in speech is no longer considered an error. Interestingly, there are several languages that have equivalent constructions, such as the Spanish hay which denotes both singular and plural depending on context.
(In writing, I would say that it is generally preferred to avoid the contraction, so “there is” and “there are” are still the formal written constructions.)