Today at work I was pulled off to the side and asked the question, “Which should be used in this email "a" or "an" before an acronym such as NTF. NTF at work means No Trouble Found.I answered but now I don't know. This is such a conundrum...
Sentence Examples:
1. Contact (a or an) NSA agent.
2. I flew (a or an) F14.
3. This was (a or an) OOBF[out of box failure].
4. I own (a or an) PS3.
...and then we have NASA. Those acronym's we say as a word.
5. I talked to (a or an) NASA representative.
My initial thought is
a NSA agent
a F14
an OOBF
a PS3
a NASA
but is sounds better as
an NSA agent
an F14
an OOBF
a PS3
a NASA
If anyone has a good ruling please comment.
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2 comments:
This site seemed official and agrees with what I thought..."an" before any vowel sound and "a" before a consenant(sp) sound.
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/a.html
In both of those cases it would be "an."
(This is because even though the acronyms start with consanants, the sounds produced by reading the acronym are vowel sounds. "N" is pronounced "En" as opposed to the hard "N" that would be made by the letter at the beginning of a word, such as "Neon".)
-Courtney S.
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