A or An: One Simple Rule, One Simple Word

It’s been a/an honor spending a/an hour in a/an hurricane with such a/an unique person, now a/an MP and a/an executive member of the music department at Harvard University in the Fanny Peabody Mason Music Building, a/an university with clout.

If your friends or children can’t do this don’t be disappointed.  Many native English speakers, speakers that only speak one language, English, can’t correctly do the above exercise.  There are many reasons for this, but the main reasons are confusion over the rules they learned, no effort towards creating a simple rule and different English Accents. Even those of you that did get the exercise correct have a difficult time teaching others ‘The Rules’.

A long time ago the simple rule for when to use ‘a’ or ’an’ was use ’a’ before consonants and ‘an’ before vowels. Then the exceptions came along. Use ‘a’ before consonants except when followed by special vowels that sound like consonants and ‘an’ before vowels except when followed by an unsounded ‘h’.  Now there seems to be 4 rules which are easier to mix up now and the simple rule does not seem simple any more.

A simpler rule is needed that is easy to remember and works in most, if not all, grammatical situations. Simple rules usually use simple words and complicated rules usually lack simple words.  Our complex rule can be rendered simple by adding one simple word ‘sound’.

When choosing to use ‘a’ or ‘an’ one simple rule is: if the word starts with a vowel sound use ‘an’. That works for almost all situations. You could learn the opposite rule if you want; If the word starts with a consonant sound use ‘a’.

Watch out for English accents that do not pronounce some consonants or vowels. People with certain English accents may write how they speak and might pronounce ‘has’ as ‘as’ or ‘help’ as ‘elp’ and this might be reflected in how they write.  Even though there is lots of confusion among writers in regard to the indefinite article a/an, focusing on a simple rule that works in most situations can be learned. Creating simple rules usually require simple words. If you could not do the exercise before, can you do it now? Here is the correct sentence:

It’s been an honor spending an hour in a hurricane with such a unique person, now an MP and an executive member of the music department at Harvard University in the Fanny Peabody Mason Music Building, a university with clout.