Re^2: RFC Is this readable?

[davidrw]

Might sound better (i catch myself doing "an xml" sometimes, too) but i believe that it is grammatically incorrect. "An" is supposed be used when the following word begins with a vowel, and "A" when the following word begins with a consonant. (There are, of course, exceptions to both because the rules are phoenetically-based.) Reference: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/esl/esliart.html

# examples of correct usage:
a cat
a huge cat
an ostrich
an underarm throw
a union
an honest cat

[Tanktalus]

And, because of the phonetic rules, you use "an". As in "An Ecks-Em-Ell editor". It's all about vocal pronounciation. If you pronounced "XML" as "ksml", then, sure, you would use "a" - but I don't have any idea on how to form that sound, and everyone I know pronounces "XML" by saying each letter seperately, leaving us with the leading "e" sound from "X".

[jdporter]

And for the exact same reason, it is proper to write "a URL", not "an URL" (unless, of course, you're a non-geek and you pronounce it "earl").

[skillet-thief]

As I suspected (but I just checked), the choice between "a" and "an" depends on phonetics and not on spelling as such. Acronyms that are pronounced letter by letter (like XML, not like NASA) are generally treated based on the pronunciation of the first letter. (The url you provided doesn't deal with the case of acronyms.)

So you might as well let loose and say "an XML"... ;-)

s-t

PS.: here they are unequivocably for saying "an", whereas here they consider "an" more readable, but admit that some purists prefer "a"...

[BerntB]

Thanks, I didn't know that. (I thought that English pronounciation varied too much to be a base for spelling.)

To skip that little detail.

If you go to my document above and read the Concepts subchapter, starting with Idea.

Is that still hard to understand?