It's "an" because it would be pronounced "an aitch ar" exercise. You still write "an HR exercise." But obviously when you write human resources you would write "a human resources exercise."Gegilworld93 wrote:No, you're using the contraction for "Human Resources" (I think), if you typed it out you wouldn't say "an human resources exercise".Walcott wrote:
I wrote it, though.
and it's definately an.
This should help:
- Spoiler:
Using a or an before an abbreviation
There are two schools of thought on this subject: "vocalisation of the abbreviation" and "vocalisation of the first word".
Abbreviation verbalised
By this rule, if the abbreviation starts with a
vowel-sounding letter, the article used is "an"; if it starts with a
consonant-sounding letter, it takes an "a". This would give "an NHS
hospital" and "a BBC documentary".
vowel-sounding letters (take "an"):A E F H I L M N O R S X
consonant-sounding letters (take "a"):B C D G J K P Q T U V W Y Z
Note: H is pronounced "aitch"!
Word verbalised
By this method, the first letter of the first word as it
is read out determines whether "a" or "an" is used. Here we would have
"a NHS hospital" ("a National Health Service hospital"), or "an UV lamp"
("an ultraviolet lamp").
The second method can look and read quite awkwardly but
is just about acceptable as long as the style is used consistently, or
where abbreviations are commonly fleshed out in the head and in speech.
Since the first method reads more naturally in the head, it's easy to
slip into it when the second style is supposedly being observed. The
first method is by far the more popular.
tl;dr Gegil's way is also correct, but the way I said is more popular. Gegil's way should be used for abbreviations that would most likely be read automatically as their full names.
hate being this tired due to lack of sleep.
