On 03/11/2010 04:52 PM, stosss wrote: > On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 7:12 AM, Mike Lynch<[email protected]> wrote: >> But "apple" is word and "su" is an initialism. Paul Brians' guide >> states specific rules when it comes to initialisms. Those rules are >> related to the "sound" of the first letter of the initialism >> not the context in which it is used. > > > su may have been created as an initialism, but technically it is not, > su is a command. It does not matter if one is using initials or words > the same rules still apply. > > As already stated "a" and "an" are general "the" is specific.
And the fact that "a" and "an" are general is exactly why they would work when describing su, at least in the original context - as I've said earlier, there is more than one way to write a command line using "su", so "an su command" does in fact make perfect sense. "the" could be used, but then that would probably need to be something like "using the su program". Of course there's always the alternative of something like "using su to become root" or "becoming root via su" to avoid the whole a/an/the debate entirely. -- http://linuxfromscratch.org/mailman/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
