Hi guys.
Thanks Graham for your teachings on the PHP course last week. The course was excellent, informative and intense! Also it was great fun! I really enjoyed your facial illustrations of breathing in code munching it up and then blowing it out to the browser. That tickled me!

So here goes for my first post.

Why do we refer to HTML files as 'an HTML file' and not 'a HTML file?'
Call me illiterate but it does not sound right to me.
Are we assuming that we do not actually pronounce the "H" correctly?
It does sound correct when we pronounce it like "aych tee em ell" but surely, that is not English!??

Well I look forward to hearing back on this one!!

Ben Taylor


Fascinating question ... I guess it's because we pronounce the letters of the abbreviration and, pronounced, the letter "H" starts with a vowel.   I think the rule follows ...

An XML file
An HTML file
An RPC connection
An FTP connection

but

a PHP Program
a BSD Unix
a MySQL database
and
a Linux Operating system

Question - err - answered by someone who took two goes to get his English 'O' Level.   I guess I had better explain 'O' levels ...

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