An Sequel
There's a bit of contention about the pronunciation of SQL in computing circles - some pronounce it as an initialism (Es Cue El), others as an acronym (Sequel). It only occurred to me today that the a/an distinction might be able to give an indication as to which the author of a text uses.
Well, it's more of a one way distinction. If you see an author consistently use 'an', it's a pretty clear indicator they use the initialism. But, I think that the other case really isn't such of an indicator: too many people don't know that 'an' isn't just for written vowels.
The ANSI standard is the initialism. The Google count is 1,170,000 for the acronym - the first page is full of Microsoft Knowledge Base articles in line with their official policy for their SQL Server product. There are 969,000 hits for the initialism. Disappointingly, it looks like I might be in the minority.
Speaking of 'an', apparently a newt was originally an ewt; the story is that the 'n' shifted at some stage. No time to fact check it - it seems pretty far fetched? It would bring the name closer to eft and the like. OED lists newte going back to the 1400s, although ewte is mentioned in the same attribution, so who knows.
By the way, why is it pronunciation, but pronounce? Lord knows. It seems that's just the standard these days. OED attests it either way for both of them. There's even pronountiation. Pronounce, pronouncing, pronunciation. There's also pronunciating, but who knows where that falls. The Latin had just the u, but it's filtered through the French who, at various times, seemed to have just-u, just-o and both. I subconsciously conflate them all - I even seem to pronounce pronunciation pro'noun-ci-a-tion. Ugh.
Well, it's more of a one way distinction. If you see an author consistently use 'an', it's a pretty clear indicator they use the initialism. But, I think that the other case really isn't such of an indicator: too many people don't know that 'an' isn't just for written vowels.
The ANSI standard is the initialism. The Google count is 1,170,000 for the acronym - the first page is full of Microsoft Knowledge Base articles in line with their official policy for their SQL Server product. There are 969,000 hits for the initialism. Disappointingly, it looks like I might be in the minority.
Speaking of 'an', apparently a newt was originally an ewt; the story is that the 'n' shifted at some stage. No time to fact check it - it seems pretty far fetched? It would bring the name closer to eft and the like. OED lists newte going back to the 1400s, although ewte is mentioned in the same attribution, so who knows.
By the way, why is it pronunciation, but pronounce? Lord knows. It seems that's just the standard these days. OED attests it either way for both of them. There's even pronountiation. Pronounce, pronouncing, pronunciation. There's also pronunciating, but who knows where that falls. The Latin had just the u, but it's filtered through the French who, at various times, seemed to have just-u, just-o and both. I subconsciously conflate them all - I even seem to pronounce pronunciation pro'noun-ci-a-tion. Ugh.