3 ms·
Not a native English speaker. Is it correct "an walking intervention"? Should it be "a walking..."?
by alberto_ol 2y ago
Not a native English speaker.
Is it correct "an walking intervention"? Should it be "a walking..."?
- richrichardsson 2y agoMore or less the rule is "an" before vowels or voiceless H. eg. An apple. A banana. An hour. A history. Quite often you see people writing "an historic achievement", but that's incorrect because the H is voiced in historic. Where it gets a bit vague is stuff like "SQL statement", because some people would say it like "Sequel statement", others will say it like "Ess-Queue-Ell statement".
- danielheath 2y ago> Quite often you see people writing "an historic achievement", but that's incorrect because the H is voiced in historic. Many accents drop their leading 'H' sounds.
- richrichardsson 2y agoI wish I could care less about such things, but sometimes linguistic descriptivism is the wrong path to take. The H should be voiced. Just because some people are too lazy to speak their own language correctly doesn't make it correct, in my worthless opinion.
- ricc 2y agoOriginal title is "Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of an individualised, progressive walking and education intervention for the prevention of low back pain recurrence in Australia (WalkBack): a randomised controlled trial", which was probably shortened to accomodate the character limit, but the submitter forgot to update the indefinite article.
- zeta0134 2y agoThat's correct. The general rule is to use "an" before a vowel sound, and "a" before a consonant sound. This gets a little fuzzy with acronyms that have several valid pronunciations, but "walking" clearly starts with a consonant sound in this case.
- layer8 2y agoIt might not be so clear for a nonnative speaker, since "walking" sounds very similar to "ooalking".
- NAHWheatCracker 2y agoNative English speaker here. "A" is the correct article before the word "walking".
- patrulek 2y agoAs a non-native i thought that op meant is it correct to use "walking intervention" instead of just "walking".
- michaelteter 2y agoSomeone shortened the original title, removing a word after “an” which had caused the need for “an” rather than “a”. In other words, the title was shortened incorrectly.
- mathgeek 2y agoJust to save folks a click, the original title contained "... an individualised, progressive walking and education intervention ...".