It’s a Los Angeles thing, but an L.A. thing. The indefinite article (that is, a or an) that you use before a word or abbreviation depends on the sound of the word, not the letter it begins with. This choice on the Yahoo! front page is wrong:
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- Abbreviations (42)
- Attributions (3)
- Capitalizing (1068)
- Change of Person (10)
- Cliches (73)
- Confused Words (875)
- accept/except (3)
- ad/add (7)
- adieu/ado (2)
- adverse/averse (1)
- advice/advise (4)
- affect/effect (25)
- aid/aide (5)
- aisle/isle (1)
- already/all ready (2)
- alter/altar (6)
- altogether/all together (10)
- anecdote/antidote (2)
- appraise/apprise (1)
- awhile/a while (9)
- baited/bated (1)
- bare/bear (19)
- berg/burg (1)
- bite/byte (4)
- boarder/border (1)
- born/borne (2)
- brake/break (6)
- breach/breech (1)
- bread/bred (1)
- buy/by (7)
- cache/cachet (6)
- caddy/catty (1)
- canon/cannon (4)
- canvas/canvass (1)
- capital/capitol (11)
- carat/karat (5)
- cease/seize (1)
- chord/cord (2)
- cite/sight/site (17)
- coarse/course (1)
- complement/compliment (21)
- complementary/complimentary (2)
- confidant/confidante (3)
- continuous/continual (3)
- dam/damn (3)
- decent/descent (4)
- defuse/diffuse (2)
- delegate/relegate (1)
- desert/dessert (4)
- die/dye (6)
- discrete/discreet (4)
- divorcé/divorcée (5)
- do/due (5)
- dual/duel (1)
- e.g./i.e. (3)
- eek/eke (3)
- elicit/illicit (3)
- everyday/every day (27)
- everyone/every one (2)
- evoke/invoke (2)
- fair/fare (3)
- faze/phase (2)
- feat/feet (1)
- fiancé/fiancée (19)
- flair/flare (1)
- flour/flower (1)
- flu/flue (1)
- forego/forgo (2)
- foreword/forward (1)
- forth/fourth (2)
- gild/guild (1)
- golf/gulf (1)
- grisly/grizzly (3)
- hangar/hanger (5)
- hawk/hock (1)
- heal/heel (3)
- hear/here (5)
- heroin/heroine (2)
- hole/whole (1)
- horde/hoard (20)
- its/it's (128)
- knew/new (7)
- knot/not (2)
- know/no (4)
- ladder/latter (1)
- led/lead (3)
- lets/let's (23)
- lightening/lightning (8)
- lo/low (1)
- loath/loathe (3)
- lose/loose (8)
- mantel/mantle (1)
- maybe/may be (2)
- meat/meet (1)
- medal/metal (1)
- meringue/merengue (1)
- moat/mote (1)
- mores/morays (1)
- morning/mourning (1)
- naval/navel (1)
- one/won (1)
- or/ore (1)
- overseas/oversees (3)
- pains/pangs (1)
- pair/pare (1)
- palate/palette (8)
- passed/past (1)
- peace/piece (4)
- peal/peel (1)
- pedal/peddle/petal (3)
- peek/peak/pique (40)
- penchant/pension (1)
- personal/personnel (1)
- perspective/prospective (1)
- plum/plumb (2)
- pole/poll (1)
- pore/pour (1)
- pray/prey (1)
- premier/premiere (4)
- prescribe/proscribe (1)
- principal/principle (14)
- rack/wrack (1)
- rap/wrap (2)
- red/read (1)
- regimen/regiment (2)
- reign/rein (15)
- right/rite (4)
- ringer/wringer (4)
- roll/role (8)
- rough/ruff (1)
- rung/wrung (1)
- seam/seem (2)
- secession/succession (1)
- seen/scene (1)
- sew/sow (1)
- shoe/shoo (9)
- sight/site (1)
- sleight/slight (1)
- staid/stayed (1)
- stationary/stationery (4)
- steal/steel (1)
- straight/strait (2)
- tack/tact (3)
- tail/tale (3)
- taut/taught (1)
- tenant/tenet (2)
- than/then (28)
- that/which (13)
- their/there/they're (32)
- threw/through (1)
- throne/thrown (2)
- tic/tick (1)
- to/too/two (43)
- toe/tow (4)
- track/tract (1)
- vain/vein (2)
- vice/vise (1)
- waist/waste (3)
- wait/weight (1)
- waive/wave (3)
- wary/weary (1)
- way/weigh (2)
- weak/week (1)
- wear/where (3)
- wet/whet (1)
- whose/who's (26)
- wreak/wreck (4)
- your/you're (57)
- Conjunctions (29)
- Contractions (117)
- Correlative Conjunctions (55)
- both…and (13)
- either…or (15)
- neither…nor (15)
- not only…but also (12)
- Department of Redundancy Dept. (286)
- Errors of Fact (715)
- Grammar Myths (4)
- Jargon (1)
- Links (21)
- Metaphors (5)
- Missing Words (611)
- Misspellings (3416)
- Modifiers (233)
- Adjectives (150)
- Adverbs (49)
- Misplaced Modifiers (36)
- Numbers (44)
- Plurals (226)
- Possessives (387)
- Pronouns (224)
- Punctuation (1608)
- Apostrophes (615)
- Colons (14)
- Commas (250)
- Dashes (11)
- Exclamation Points (9)
- Hyphens (761)
- Parentheses (29)
- Periods (76)
- Question Marks (118)
- Quotation Marks (224)
- Semicolons (38)
- Subject-Verb Agreement (435)
- Titles (102)
- Uncategorized (393)
- Unnecessary Words (596)
- Verbs (571)
- Wrong words (1839)
Tags
apostrophe bad grammar bad spelling capitalization Commonly confused words editing extra word factual error factual errors funny writing errors funny writing mistakes grammar grammar errors grammar mistakes homophone homophones hyphen incorrect grammar incorrect punctuation incorrect spelling journalism missing punctuation missing word misspelled celebrities misspelling proofreading Punctuation punctuation errors punctuation mistakes Shine spelling spelling error spelling mistake typo typos unnecessary word verb writing wrong word Yahoo! Yahoo! front page Yahoo! Movies Yahoo! News Yahoo! Shine Yahoo! TV
It’s an L.A. thing
August 18, 2012 — Laura
Posted in Wrong words. Tags: a, an, article, editing, indefinite article, proofreading, wrong word, Yahoo!, Yahoo! front page. Leave a Comment »
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