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Re: [ITP] neon (A WebDAV library required by Subversion)
On Mon, 3 May 2004, Max Bowsher wrote:
> Igor Pechtchanski wrote:
> > On Mon, 3 May 2004, Robert Collins wrote:
> >
> >> On Mon, 2004-05-03 at 21:56, Max Bowsher wrote:
> >>> Reini Urban wrote:
> >>>> Max Bowsher schrieb:
> >>>>> sdesc: "An HTTP and WebDAV client library"
> >>>>
> >>>> ===== neon =======
> >>>> sdesc: "A HTTP and WebDAV client library"
> >>>>
> >>>> ===== libneon24 =======
> >>>>> sdesc: "Runtime library component of Neon - an HTTP and WebDAV client
> >>>>> library"
> >>>>
> >>>> sdesc: "Runtime library component of Neon - a HTTP and WebDAV client
> >>>> library"
> >>>
> >>> I disagree, and so does the neon website.
> >>
> >> And you're both wrong. An Apple, A Car.
> >>
> >> Rob
> >
> > Or "an Aych-Tee-Tee-Pee"... Acronyms can go by either spelling or
> > pronunciation. I hate to get in on what's essentially a grammatic
> > discussion, but I'd say the W3C has the final authority on the matter...
> > Or it would, if it could be consistent enough. E.g. [rfc2626 = HTTP/1.1]:
> >
> > $ wget -q -O- http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt | sed 's/\(an\?
> > http\)/\n\1/ig' | grep -i 'a http' | wc -l 5
> > $ wget -q -O- http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt | sed 's/\(an\?
> > http\)/\n\1/ig' | grep -i 'an http' | wc -l 68
> > $
> >
> > So, the jury's still out on this one. The majority seems to lean Max's
> > way, FWIW, and is on the increase (the score for rfc1945 [HTTP/1.0] was
> > 4/23 [a/an]). IMO, if Tim Berners-Lee can use "an", who are we to argue? ;-)
> > Igor
>
> IMO, a/an exist because of pronunciation. On that basis, "An HTTP" is
> correct.
>
> I've never consiously thought (until now) about whether to say "A HTTP
> client" or "An HTTP client". "An" just seemed the obvious choice by analogy
> with other pronunciations. Do some people choose to say "A HTTP client"? The
> sound pattern "A aitch" is so uncommon in English as to sound distinctly
> strange to me, so I would be surprised if many people did.
>
> Max.
I also usually say "an HTTP", for the same reasons. FWIW, At least one
grammar web site agrees:
<http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/grammar/archive/articles_pronunciation.html>.
Igor
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