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I know we are to use “a” before words that start with a consonant sound and “an” before words that start with a vowel sound, but in the case of an initialism that have a vowel sound for first letter, but a consonant sound for the abbreviated word, which of the two indefinite articles are to be used?

Example:

  1. I have an SSD drive installed in my computer.
  2. I have a SSD drive installed in my computer.

In the example above SSD is an initialism for Solid State Drive.

I'm inclined to think that there may be separate rules for speech and written approaches to this, as when speaking I would obviously use the first phrase in the example.

Kalamalka Kid
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    An answer here, by Professor John Lawler Duplicate Question – Nigel J Aug 15 '20 at 21:50
  • @KwlamalkaKid, there's no such thing as an "official rule" of English, particularly around modern innovations like acronyms. The a/an distinction is purely for ease of phonetic pronunciation. Acronyms can be either be pronounced as initialisms (S-S-D), or as a word (e.g. RAID), or as the words they represent in full, so like Jim says, it's up to the writer to decide which pronunciation he prefers and then use the indefinite article to suit. If the reader takes a different view, that's his problem. – Steve Aug 15 '20 at 21:53
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    There is no special rule for written articles. A/An in print follows the speech rule (so the writer needs to hear the word to tell how it's pronounced). The doesn't distinguish the two pronunciations in spelling, so most native speakers (who have never been taught the phonetics of their language) have never noticed. It always comes as a shock to American students that the definite and indefinite articles have similar rules; they've known about one since they learned to read, but the other was never mentioned in school. – John Lawler Aug 15 '20 at 22:04
  • If you don't like the ambiguity, don't use the indefinite article at all or in that way. (1) I have one* SSD card.* (2) I have a single* SSD card.* – Jason Bassford Aug 16 '20 at 00:47

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You are correct in your first impulse. The only reason we write that way is because we speak that way. If you were to write out the abbreviation then it would be "A Solid State Hard Drive". It could be nothing else. While cloaked in an abbreviation the "an" does the job it was designed for; preventing us from hearing the dissonance of the /a/ against a consonant. For the time being I am sticking with spinning disks.

Elliot
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