Do you ever run across people who abuse the a/an rule? The rule traditionally calls for the use of a if the next word in the sentence starts with a consonant and to use an if the next word starts with a vowel. Of course, like anything in the English language, there are exceptions and sometimes, dare I say abuses of this rule. If the next word, for instance, starts with a silent consonant, it’s proper to use the word an. An example of this would be the word “honor” where the h is silent. “It was an honor to receive the reward.”
There appears to be some confusion on this subject. Too often, for instance, we see the an in front of the word “history”. Somebody out there must think that H is (sometimes?) a vowel, or they think that the H in history is silent.
I blame this confusion on popular actress Anne Hathaway. That name messes people up.
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