Comments on: Muphry Has Caused Many A Downfall

By: Tizzy

Tizzy — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:22:43 +0000

Blame the French, I normally do. As the following article indicates, you are more right than me: http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/words/ananda.html

My English teachers put a big red cross through ‘a hysteric…’ or similar, so the habit will be hard to break, I’m afraid. I don’t think it likely I’ll write ‘a honest MP’ or ‘a hour before Dr Who’. Of course, these are examples of words with an unaspirated h – oh what the heck.

The pronunciation of ‘h’ is another thorny subject…

By: Stu

Stu — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:53:04 +0000

I think forms such as ‘an history’ or ‘an hotel’ sound clunky, and promote the dropping of the initial ‘h’ – in the style of the American pronunciation of ‘herbs’. It also contravenes the grammatical rule that words beginning with consonants be preceded by ‘a’, although breaking an English grammatical rule is not really a big deal, I suppose, seeing as they’re generally inconsistent within correct grammar.

Why, if we considered ‘an heavy object’ as correct English, would ‘an yellow object’ be incorrect?

As for the Oxford comma, I am Oxford comma agnostic. In general I try and avoid it, but it fits readily with the rhythm of my speech so I often use it without conscious intent.

By: Tizzy

Tizzy — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:25:27 +0000

Private Eye have a glorious Ped’ants Corner. For months, the pedants couldn’t agree where the apostrophe should be placed, if at all.

I seem to remember we had a mild to-do on whether words such as hotel should be preceded by ‘an’ or ‘a’. I’m still a fan of the Oxford comma.

Ahhh, Webcameron. Indeed.