a FTSE 250 company

[Glizdka]

How do you choose between a and an when it comes to acronyms, initials, and individual letters?

I usually treat them phonetically. If they begin with a vowel sound, I choose an, based on how they are pronounced, so:

---

I got an A on my final exam.
He's a UE citizen.
It's an R.L. Stine novel.

---

However, I sometimes come across examples in which the author uses a where I would use an. Here's one from Market Leader Advanced by Pearson Longman, adapted from an article originally published in The Daily Telegraph:

---

Walton admits that none of these roles generates a substantive salary on its own—a FTSE 250 company might pay about £30,000 a year to a non-executive board member—but when combined, her directorships provide a good income.

---

What do you make of this?

 

[PeterCW]

How do you choose between a and an when it comes to acronyms, initials, and individual letters?

I usually treat them phonetically. If they begin with a vowel sound, I choose an, based on how they are pronounced, so:

---

I got an A on my final exam.
He's a UE citizen.
It's an R.L. Stine novel.

---

However, I sometimes come across examples in which the author uses a where I would use an. Here's one from Market Leader Advanced by Pearson Longman, adapted from an article originally published in The Daily Telegraph:

---

Walton admits that none of these roles generates a substantive salary on its own—a FTSE 250 company might pay about £30,000 a year to a non-executive board member—but when combined, her directorships provide a good income.

---

What do you make of this?

FTSE is normally treated as an acronym pronounced "foot-see" as opposed to an initialism.

 

[Rover_KE]

@Glizdka, did you mean ‘an EU citizen’?

As far as I know, there’s no such thing as ‘a UE citizen’.

 

[Glizdka]

@Glizdka, did you mean ‘an EU citizen’?

As far as I know, there’s no such thing as ‘a UE citizen’.

That's a typo brainfart on so many levels on my part.

Yes, a EU citizen.

 

[emsr2d2]

That's a typo brainfart on so many levels on my part.

Yes, an EU citizen.

 

[Glizdka]

Ouch, now that I think about it, I might have wanted to say an UE user, not citizen, and somehow mixed it all up.

 

[jutfrank]

I might have wanted to say an UE user, not citizen, and somehow mixed it all up.

More cerebral flatulence?

 

[5jj]

an EU citizen
a UE member

 

[Alex Case]

I like the idea that everyone commenting here is a UE citizen!

 

[Annabel Lee]

an EU citizen

That's how I'd say and write it, too. But might the choice depend on whether one is pronouncing the initialism as an initialism or as the phrase for which it stands: "an EE YOU" vs. "a YUR . . ." (that is, "an /i/" vs. "a /jər/")?

In my experience, most linguists write "an NP" rather than "a NP," "NP" being the initialism for "noun phrase." I write "an NP" because I'm saying/thinking "an en pee." I believe those who write "a NP" are instead saying/thinking "a noun phrase."

 

[emsr2d2]

That's how I'd say and write it, too. But might the choice depend on whether one is pronouncing the initialism as an initialism or as the phrase for which it stands: "an EE YOU" vs. "a YUR . . ." (that is, "an /i/" vs. "a /jər/")?

In my experience, most linguists write "an NP" rather than "a NP," "NP" being the initialism for "noun phrase." I write "an NP" because I'm saying/thinking "an en pee." I believe those who write "a NP" are instead saying/thinking "a noun phrase."

It doesn't matter what they're thinking. It should be written as the writer intends it to be read out. I don't think anyone would read "an EU citizen" but say it aloud as "a European Union citizen".
Anyone writing "an NP", linguist or not, should write it exactly as that.

 

[Annabel Lee]

I don't think anyone would read "an EU citizen" but say it aloud as "a European Union citizen".
Anyone writing "an NP", linguist or not, should write it exactly as that.

I don't see why a reader is not entitled to read "EU" or "NP" and say or think the phrase for which the initialism stands.

 

[jutfrank]

The writer writes in such a way as to suggest how the reader should read.

 

[Annabel Lee]

The writer writes in such a way as to suggest how the reader should read.

I think that's true in general, and, again, I am someone who writes "an NP," "an EU," etc. However, exceptions to your principle do exist. Take abbreviations, for instance. When you read "etc.," don't you say "et cetera," or do you say "ehtk" or "ehts"?

As to linguists who write "a NP" rather than "an NP," they are surely not in the majority. I just checked a few sources in my grammar library. Chomsky wrote "an NP," as do Huddleston and Pullum, and Andrew Radford (author of numerous syntax textbooks). However, the syntactic genius James D. McCawley, author of The Syntactic Phenomena of English, used "a NP":

"According to (16), there should be an asymmetry between subjects and nonsubjects, since the subject c-commands everything in its S, while a NP within a V' c-commands nothing outside of the V' (and the modifiers of the V') and a NP that is properly contained in the subject c-commands nothing outside of the subject" (The Syntactic Phenomena of English, 2nd Ed., 1988, page 355).​

 

[jutfrank]

When you read "etc.," don't you say "et cetera," or do you say "ehtk" or "ehts"?

Abbreviations are a nice example of writing something that you want to be read out in a different way from how it looks on paper.

However, the syntactic genius James D. McCawley, author of The Syntactic Phenomena of English, used "a NP":

I'm not sure what your point is about this. Does this not mean that McCawley wanted his readers to read it as 'noun phrase' rather than 'en-pee'? Use of 'a' instead of 'an' prohibits the reader from reading it as 'en-pee', no?

 

[Annabel Lee]

I'm not sure what your point is about this. Does this not mean that McCawley wanted his readers to read it as 'noun phrase' rather than 'en-pee'? Use of 'a' instead of 'an' prohibits the reader from reading it as 'en-pee', no?

Yes, exactly: that is the point I was making. I didn't think you were in agreement with me about that. I thought you were responding to my question to Emr2d2 and thus defending her sense that "a NP" is incorrect. Now I see that there was actually no disagreement between us.

Incidentally, McCawley wrote the most hilarious article I have ever read. I highly recommend it to anyone who is not averse to reading "bad" four-letter words. Just search for "English Sentences without Overt Grammatical Subject," an article he published under the pseudonym Quang Phúc Đông. It had me in stitches the first time I encountered it.

 

[jutfrank]

To set things straight, this is my view:

A good writer will write in such a way that he controls how his readers sound out the words, whether they're reading aloud or in their mind's ear. If McCawley writes "a NP" it's because he wants people to say it as 'a noun phrase', not 'an en-pee'. If that's what he wants to do, it can't be incorrect. Why he wants to do that I would guess is simply that that is how he's hearing it in his own mind as he writes. How much he's thinking about his readers at that point I don't know.

 

[jutfrank]

"English Sentences without Overt Grammatical Subject,"

It gets funnier and funnier the further you read!