The annoyance of the letter H
Created | Updated Apr 29, 2005
A comment for those of us who pronounce the letter H haytch and not aytch. Although, to those who pronounce it the second way both of the above are the same thing. Annoying isn't it.
It just bothers me when reading something where the author uses "an" before a word starting with H instead of using "a". Despite the fact that H is clearly not a vowel and grammatically "a" should be used. So it appears the author does this only to please those people who pronounce it the second way, or the first way as well if you are one of those people. Confused yet?
Maybe I am just being pedantic but when I see this occur in a piece of writing I always feel I have to go back and correct myself and read it as the writer intended, i.e. "aytch".
Although obviously in some cases it is necessary, e.g. an hour.
But maybe I'm wrong and it is the falut of the programmers who programmed the word processer that the writer is using to not accept "a h..." as correct grammar. If so I'm sorry to any writers I have offended and to those of you who feel they wasted time reading this.
It just bothers me when reading something where the author uses "an" before a word starting with H instead of using "a". Despite the fact that H is clearly not a vowel and grammatically "a" should be used. So it appears the author does this only to please those people who pronounce it the second way, or the first way as well if you are one of those people. Confused yet?
Maybe I am just being pedantic but when I see this occur in a piece of writing I always feel I have to go back and correct myself and read it as the writer intended, i.e. "aytch".
Although obviously in some cases it is necessary, e.g. an hour.
But maybe I'm wrong and it is the falut of the programmers who programmed the word processer that the writer is using to not accept "a h..." as correct grammar. If so I'm sorry to any writers I have offended and to those of you who feel they wasted time reading this.
