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To: Paul Richards <p.richards@elsevier.co.uk>
cc: fenner@parc.xerox.com (Bill Fenner), asami@freefall.freebsd.org,
        freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/editors/bpatch/pkg COMMENT 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 22 Mar 1996 16:44:50 GMT."
             <199603221644.QAA07073@tees> 
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1996 16:48:00 -0800
Message-ID: <22389.827542080@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
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[Redirected to -chat since I don't think that the CVS committers particularly
 want to join in what could be a protracted grammatical discussion :-)]

> Now, the first draft of my Phd was returned with a big red message saying
> "a unit, not an unit!". Now I was a little peeved about this since my

FWIW, I've never seen "an unit" used anywhere on this side of the
pond.  Our english teacher taught us (way back in the late 70's) that
`an' be used in front of words starting a, e, i or o.  We never
learned it as a general rule for vowels (especially since u and
sometimes y fit that category, and you'd never say "an uniform" or "an
yankee").

So if times they-are-a-changin' then perhaps only in the UK, since "an
unit" has _always_ been considered incorrect over here, at least since
I was in grade school.

					Jordan