A AAA-rated hotel or an AAA-rated hotel?

Remember three-dimensional colleagues? People you used to work with who were more than just a bunch of letters followed by an @ sign and a “.com”? They had faces and voices and a Scotch tape dispenser on their desk that they hadn’t used since the early ’90s?

They were great, but you had to get dressed in the morning and drive someplace to see them, which wasn’t great.

Still, those people were always there for me when I wanted to walk from desk to desk asking them to say aloud something I’d written on a piece of paper. For example, there was the time years ago when I approached multiple co-workers to ask them to read aloud the words “The 1,100-square-foot property is for sale.”

They looked at me like I was playing a trick on them. But I wasn’t. I just wanted to hear how, without thinking about it, they would pronounce “1,100.” In their minds, did that number sound like “eleven hundred” or “one thousand one hundred”? And though pronunciation usually has little to do with editing, in one instance it does: the choice between “a” and “an.”

We all learned in school that the indefinite article “a” goes before consonants: a cat, a person, a dozen donuts. The indefinite article “an” goes before vowels: an octopus, an individual, an angel food cake. But if you were listening closely, you remember that the teacher didn’t say exactly that. It’s not about the letter that follows, it’s about the sound.

Some words that start with a vowel are spoken as if they start with a consonant. For example, “universe” starts with a U, but it’s pronounced as if it starts with a Y: yoo-ni-verse.

Some words that start with a consonant are spoken as if they start with a vowel. The most famous example is “historic.” Do you say it was “an historic event” or “a historic event”? People are bitterly divided on this question. In fact, either is correct. In American publishing, style guides say to pronounce the H and use the indefinite article “a.” It was a historic event.

But there are other, more problematic terms no one’s sure how to handle.

Initials account for a lot of these. “I read a Federal Bureau of Investigation report” clearly takes “a” before “Federal” because F creates a consonant sound. But when you say the letter itself, you start with a vowel sound: eff. “I read an FBI report.” Speaking aloud, everyone gets this right. But when it’s in print, writers and readers may not know what rule applies: Do you treat F as a consonant: “a FBI report”? Or do you write it the way people speak it: “an FBI” report?

In this case, there’s a clear answer: Choose your indefinite article based on sound, not spelling, even when you’re writing. So “an FBI report” is correct.

To get these right, though, you have to know how the terms are pronounced. That’s not always easy.

The weirdest example I know is the abbreviation for the American Automobile Association. The word “American” starts with a vowel sound: an American Automobile Association perk. That doesn’t change when you use just the first letter of American, A, which is also pronounced as a vowel sound. So all the rules say it should be “an AAA perk.”

But most of my co-workers who read this aloud off a sheet of paper didn’t pronounce the club ay-ay-ay. They pronounced it triple-a. And because “triple” starts with a consonant sound, it takes “a” as its article: “a triple-a perk.”

In odd cases like this, it makes sense to go to the source. So I checked the AAA website, where I saw, in their own words, “Become a AAA Approved Auto Repair Facility.” They pronounce it “triple.” So did most of my former co-workers. So that’s how I treat it now in print. And as for that “1,100” survey, I don’t remember what the consensus was. Choose whichever pronunciation seems more natural to you.

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