A Historical Sensibility

Speakers and writers of English who would never refer to “an hamster,” “an harmonica,” or “an histamine response” may nevertheless favor “an historian” or “an heroic effort.” Politicians and other officials sometimes employ this formulation, but it is a relic of an outmoded pronunciation rather than an examplar of elevated English.

As Claire Cook explains, “The choice of a or an before a word depends . . . on the sound—not the letter—that follows.” A is used before “an h you hear,” as in hawk, honeycomb, or hinterland, whereas an is used before a silent h, as in honor (164). Although there was a time when an was used before a sounded h, this practice is “no longer current“ (Follett 36).

The pronunciation of words that begin with h has shifted over time. Cook notes that the h was once virtually inaudible in words like history and hotel, which used an as a preceding article. “But today the h is generally pronounced in these words, and the appropriate article is a” (164). Although pronunciation is not a matter of universal agreement (for example, in British English, herb begins with an h sound that American English omits), if you pronounce the h in history and hero, there is no need to drop it from the other forms of those words or to pair them with an. 

In 1965, Theodore M. Bernstein referred to “a lingering tendency on the part of some American writers to use ‘an historic document,’ though they wouldn’t be caught even in a British pub saying ‘an hotel.'” Despite Bernstein’s declaration that “the preferred form these days, on both sides of the Atlantic, is ‘a historic document'” (3), the tendency still lingers, suggesting if nothing else a historical sensibility.

Works Cited

Bernstein, Theodore M. The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage. The Free Press, 1965.

Cook, Claire Kehrwald. Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing. Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

Follett, Wilson. Modern American Usage: A Guide. Edited and completed by Jacques Barzun, Hill and Wang, 1966.