{"id":67,"date":"2009-07-16T19:15:17","date_gmt":"2009-07-16T19:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meabhi.com\/blog\/?p=67"},"modified":"2009-07-16T19:15:17","modified_gmt":"2009-07-16T19:15:17","slug":"require-director-for-a-ngo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meabhi.com\/blog\/require-director-for-a-ngo\/","title":{"rendered":"Require director for A NGO"},"content":{"rendered":"

No , don\u2019t get me wrong! I am neither running a job portal nor an NGO. Today while sipping my morning coffee I noticed a job ad posted in a leading daily. It was for the post of director in a reputed NGO. The ad read: \u201cXYZ ( name changed) requires a director for managing its sponsorship program. The ideal candidate should have 2 years experience in handling A NGO.\u201d<\/em> Errrr! Somebody goofed up here, it should have been: The ideal candidate should have 2 years experience in handling AN NGO and NOT A NGO.
\nThere\u2019s a big confusion regarding when to use a and an. Many of us usually think that \u201can\u201d goes before all the words that start with vowels, like an apple, an egg, an umbrella etc. But there are a few exceptions. Consider words like \u201cuniversity\u201d, \u201cunion\u201d etc, though they begin with a vowel but the indefinite article that should be used before these words is A and not AN. The reason being the sound made by u in \u201cuniversity\u201d and \u201cunion\u201d is same as that of \u201cy\u201d in \u201cyou\u201d. So, if you thought \u201can\u201d university and \u201can\u201d union is correct then pause for a moment and replace \u201cuniversity\u201d with \u201cyou\u201d and what do you get \u201cAN You\u201d \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

Another word that begins with a vowel but does not take \u201can\u201d before it is \u201cone\u201d We don\u2019t say: \u201cit was an one \u2013 sided match\u201d. The correct construction is \u201cit was a one \u2013 sided match.\u201d The reason is o makes the same sound as w in won. So, what we see here is the usage of article does not depend on the written representation of the first letter in a word, i.e if the first letter of the word is a vowel then it\u2019s not necessary that it will have \u201can\u201d before it. It depends on the phonetic (sound) quality or pronunciation of the first letter in a word, i.e. if the first letter makes a vowel-type sound, you use “an” like \u201can hour\u201d. If the first letter makes a consonant-type sound, you use “a.”<\/p>\n

Usage of a\/ an for abbreviations is also based on the pronunciation of the first letter. For instance, MBA, NRI, NGO, FBI etc all begin with a consonant but the first letter has a vowel type sound. So, \u201can\u201d should be placed before them. However, if you are using the full name instead of acronym like Non-governmental organization instead of NGO then you should use \u201ca Non-governmental organization.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No , don\u2019t get me wrong! I am neither running a job portal nor an NGO. Today while sipping my morning coffee I noticed a job ad posted in a leading daily. It was for the post of director in a reputed NGO. The ad read: \u201cXYZ ( name changed) requires a director for managing its sponsorship program. The ideal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[117,120,121,118,119,122],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-content-writing","tag-a","tag-a-and-an","tag-aan","tag-an","tag-article","tag-indefinite-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meabhi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meabhi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meabhi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meabhi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meabhi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.meabhi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68,"href":"https:\/\/www.meabhi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions\/68"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meabhi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meabhi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meabhi.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}