Not long ago, a publishing friend of mine asked me a question, as she was having a teensy little contretemps with an author, whose book she was about to publish. He was so insistent that the part of his book’s title, which contained the word ‘historical’, should be ‘an historical’. In fact, he was so insistent, it made her doubt her own knowledge.
So, let’s try and clarify this. ‘H’, when aspirated, i.e. pronounced with a ‘huh’ sound, is a consonant. Words that begin with a consonant, when preceded by an indefinite pronoun, are therefore introduced with ‘a’. Continue reading “Grammar Tip: An Aitch or A Haitch”
Guest Post
Every time I begin a sentence with “and”, a voice in my head sings, “You’re not supposed to do that.” I usually fix it and apologize internally to my ninth grade English teacher. So it pains me to admit that after hours of research, I could find no official rule against using a conjunction to start a sentence. Yes, there is a raging controversy about it, but here’s what’s not up for debate: If there is or ever was such a rule, it has a long history of being ignored. I pulled six books at random from my shelves and easily found the following examples.