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Comment by constantly | Hacker News Reader

I think it’s “An Historic” not “A.”

Formally, the word historic begins with a consonant sound and so the form a historic is preferred in formal writing. However, many people prefer the form an historic in informal writing and speech for personal reasons.

This makes sense! It’s like lede vs lead. It’s really lede, but common usage has made lead acceptable. At least this is a better explanation and intuition than the poster below who simply asserts one thing based on the first letter without beginning to understand any context.

Historic in standard dictionaries (Oxford, Webster) has the h pronounced (IPA: /hiˈstôrik/ ) so we must use A instead of An.

It is different for some other words start with h, for example hour (IPA: /ˈou(ə)r/) that the h is silent and it starts with the vowel sound, so we should use an hour.

I disagree (NZ English), but am curious. Would you say "an history book", or "an historical society", or "an historian"? My dad is definitely a historian to me.

No, "historic" doesn't start with a vowel sound.

I believe 'h' is an odd exception to such rules.

It's not. In some dialects H would be silent, and you can certainly write "an historic" because of that in informal writing, but it's discouraged in style guides that sites like this would use.

“An ‘istoric”

Ironically, that's how it'd be transliterated in greek - where h really is a strange exception that gets a breath mark rather than its own proper letter in the alphabet.

This is incorrect information. It’s actually quite controversial and most learned people point to “an.” Either way, one shouldn’t talk factually as if the issue is settled. Particularly if you’re citing style guides, like you are in this response, rather than informal usage.

It's a dialect issue. Learned people in different regions disagree.

Me, I voice my 'h's, so "a historic" is correct in my locale.

When style guides recommend you to use "a historic" in formal writing, why should I not talk factually about what they recommend. You were the first to complain about the usage in this article.

It could also be because the H is almost silent in some English accents.

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