Catie Holdridge
SEO (search engine optimisation) is often high on the business agenda. Being found online is vital for most organisations – and harder than ever to achieve. So those organisations may go looking for a company or tool to help them appear near the top of the search-engine rankings.
But when they do, as our blog reader Mark asks, are they looking for ‘a SEO company or tool’ or ‘an SEO company or tool’?
Good question, Mark – and one that often comes up with abbreviations.
Fortunately, it’s an easy one to sort out: you just look at the pronunciation of the abbreviation. Although it begins with a consonant, phonetically SEO (ess-ee-oh) starts with a vowel, so you would precede it with ‘an’.
So that means that abbreviations beginning with A, E, F, H (pronounced ‘aitch’), I, L, M, N, O, R, S and X should be preceded by ‘an’. Those beginning with B, C, D, G, J, K, P, Q, T, U, V, W, Y, or Z will take ‘a’.
Image credit: mohd kamarul hafiz / Shutterstock
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