Earlier this week, an historic building along Haywood Road sold for close to $1 million. Over the past decade, West Asheville and its main artery has grown into a thriving home of independent restaurants, night spots and businesses, one that increasingly serves as an alternative to the increasingly crowded downtown. We’ll keep an eye on this one.
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a/an historic number of nitnoid comments and one obligatory “not another restaurant” post.
How about some substance?
In our defense, this is not an especially substantial subject. A property is for sale. Whee. It was not purchased, there is no development planned yet, no new business, etc, all of which would be somewhat more substantial news.
now if the dudes that own the adjoining store and the
old gas station would participate that whole end block there COULD be something great! It’s an IDEAL spot for a great redevelopment, but into WHAT? (more restaurants?…ugh)
Can you spot the error in the following sentence?
“Earlier this week, an historic building along Haywood Road sold for close to $1 million.”
No. Did it not sell for that amount?
It should be ‘a’ instead of ‘an.’
Incorrect. In english, “an” is used when the next word begins with a vowel or an “h.”
I don’t know if that’s technically correct rule or not, but the use always bothers me. I think the rule should be “an” is used when the next SOUND is a vowel, and “a” should be used when the next SOUND is a consonant, regardless of the letter.
I use “an” for words where the h is silent in standard American english pronunciation, like “hour” or “honest” but not for words where the h is clearly pronounced as a consonant like “hamburger” or “historic”.
I suppose in some versions of English pronunciation (such as cochney), the h is silent even in “historic” so you would say “An ‘istoric building” but it just doesn’t sound right with the American pronunciation of the word.
That’s not exactly right, it’s the vowel sound that drives the rule. So it depends more on how you enunciate ‘historic.’ Dropping the hard ‘h’ sound will make ‘an’ sound right, but if you pronounce the word correctly then you’ll hear that it sounds wrong.