What’s the rule?
I have an incredibly smart friend who believed that onions should never be refrigerated.
He’d read something online that claimed if you stored a raw onion in a refrigerator, it would absorb toxic bacteria and poison you. I informed him that onions often require cold temperatures to grow properly, so that claim made absolutely no sense. And for all the refrigerated onions my family had eaten, we’d never once been ill. He laughed.
Sometimes we’re fed a partial truth (that whole onions are better stored outside the refrigerator, for example) and ingest it as a whole one (it’s dangerous to store onions in the refrigerator). Just like the commonly known rule for using “a” and “an.”
If you were told in elementary school to use “a” before words beginning with a consonant and to use “an” before words beginning with a vowel, you were on the right track. But the truth is a little more complicated, and it can come back to bite you in the onion.
Let’s start at the beginning before we move forward. You already know the following examples are correct.
Now here’s the all-important clarification of the “a” and “an” rule:
Use “a” before words that begin with a consonant sound and use “an” before words that begin with a vowel sound. The key addition is “sound.”
Based on that, take a look at these examples, which are also correct:
If you’re confused, repeat the list aloud, focusing on the first sound you hear as you pronounce the word after the articles “a” or “an.”
Now look back at the list as you read these explanations:
You don’t need to understand the reasons behind all these pronunciation/spelling quirks; you only need to know how to say the words and apply the simple rule.
To summarize:
If you have more questions about this rule, submit a comment below. And if you’re feeling pretty confident after reading this post, see if you can ace this grammar quiz from the ProofreadNOW archives.
We’re cheering you and your grammar game on!
*Silent consonants are sometimes based on the dialect of a region. If it’s more common to pronounce a silent letter at the beginning of a word where you live (e.g., (H)umble, Texas), adjust your articles accordingly with our blessing.