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While writing a math paper, I have met many places to determine which indefinite articles should I use before a math symbol. Another example is "a/an f-exceptional divisor", here f is a math symbol to denote a map.

Thank you for your advise!

Li Yutong
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    Use “an” if you pronounce these as “en-tuple” and “eff-exceptional”. You choose between “a” and “an” based on the pronunciation of the following word. Related: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/321549/how-to-pronounce-the-names-of-supersymmetric-partner-particles-of-fermions – herisson May 21 '18 at 00:12
  • I see, but is there any exception for math writing? – Li Yutong May 21 '18 at 00:19
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    No; the only circumstance where there might be an exception is with symbols that have no definite pronunciation, and in that case it would be best to rephrase or re-structure the sentence to avoid the problem. See https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/184993/what-article-do-we-use-before-a-symbol-is-it-an-or-a, https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/446089/indefinite-article-before-i0 – herisson May 21 '18 at 00:22

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