It’s easy most of the time to know when to use a and
when to use an: the initial sound of the next word
determines that. However, there are a few combinations that puzzle me:
a/an historical perspective, a/an
hotel?
JL
Jacksonville, Mississippi
Historically speaking, according to The American Heritage Dictionary
of the English Language (Houghton Mifflin, 1996), “an
was once a common variant before words beginning with h
in which the first syllable was unstressed; thus, 18th-century authors
wrote either a historical or an historical
but a history, not an history.” By
1926, H. W. Fowler (Modern English Usage) regarded the continued
use of an before such words as pedantic. Nowadays it
survives primarily before the word “historical”; one rarely encounters
a reference to “an hysterectomy” or “an hereditary trait.”
Apparently using a or an before the
h- of the unstressed syllable of a few words
is at the discretion of the speaker or writer. Some people say a
historic time, others say an historic time;
some say a hotel, others say an hotel;
some say a hysterical child, others an hysterical
child.