Hey everyone, I'll keep this short and sweet because it's really not a complicated question, but it's something I've wondered for a while. When you have an acronym and you use an article before it, do you choose the article based on the sound the first letter of the acronym makes? Or do you use the sound the first word of the acronym makes? I'm not sure if that makes sense so here's an example: "I have an MC that likes to eat chocolate cake." or "I have a MC that likes to eat chocolate cake." If I read the acronym "MC" as the actual letters, then I need the article to be "an" due to the M (pronounced em). But if I read it as the actual words it represents, then the article needs to stay "a" because you lose the beginning vowel sound. Is there a general rule for this? Do you guys generally do it one way or the other? Does it depend on the word for you? Thanks!
I looked at a few style guides and ended up on stackexchange, but couldn't find an actual rule, just a lot of rehashing of the "vowel sound = an" one. Not much accounting for variance in pronunciation. I know that I personally have a mixed lexicon when it comes to expanding or just phonetically pronouncing acronyms. MC is always 'emcee' for me but my brain says 'lol' not 'laugh out loud'. I'm assuming you're not actually using 'mc' if you've got a specific thing, so I'd think about how long the acronyms has been in use and how widespread the usage is. But to use mc as an example, it's been in use for a super long time as a shortening of master of ceremonies, so I think most people probably just read it as 'emcee'? Don't quote me, I guess. But a newer / more niche acronym is more likely to be 'spelled out' because people are more used to the full form and are just using the acronym for brevity or convenience. People used to commonly say 'laugh out loud', then it became 'el oh el', now 'lawl' is common.
Thanks @izzybot and @GingerCoffee. I suspect there's not going to be a hard and fast rule on this one, but, izzy, I think you're on to something when we talk about the time the acronym has been in use. In this case, I was referring to MC as Main Character, rather than Master of Ceremonies. Does this usage change your stance at all? I asked because I find myself alternating between reading "MC" as both "Emcee" and "Main Character." I don't know why my brain doesn't just stick to one, but the article always trips me up when I'm reading a sentence with that in it, which happens (as you can imagine) quite a lot on a writer's forum.
Nah, I think being used to 'emcee' in another context just transferred to using the same pronunciation for 'main character'. It throws me when people say "a mc" - always sounds wrong, and I go back and re-read it as "a main character".
