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From what I know, in English, the rule is that before a word starting with h, we use the article "a". So I would imagine that the correct way is:

"a hexadecimal number"

Searching the Internet, it looks like we find "a hexadecimal" much more than "an hexadecimal", yet, I'm pretty sure I've seen "an" being used many times with that word. Probably just programmers...

Is "a" the correct article for "hexadecimal" (and other similar words such as "a hexagon")?

tchrist
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Alexis Wilke
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  • This is a sandhi effect that should happen naturally in any native speaker. The stress is on the first syllable of hexagon so it can only be a hexagon /əˈhɛksəˌgɑn/. But because we often drop unstressed syllable-initial /h/ sounds in fluent connected speech (for example, making call her back sound just like caller back /ˈkɔləɹˈbæk/), for those who do so it would naturally come out an hexagonal house /ənəkˈsɑgənəlˈhɑws/. – tchrist Feb 04 '23 at 21:22
  • @tchrist Thank you for your comment, although the beginning is still quite offensive. I did a few searches, but as it often happens, I have not found anything that fully answered the question so decided to post it anyway. Maybe you should fix the search algorithm so it understands what a poor individual like me is really looking for. – Alexis Wilke Feb 04 '23 at 22:04
  • I'm sorry you felt bad. What wording would you prefer which conveys the same key information in cases of such massive duplicates like this one? Did you try checking our FAQs=questions with the most duplicates overall, FAQs about articles, or FAQs about indefinite articles? We might be able to add guidance or a FAQ board to make those easier to find. – tchrist Feb 04 '23 at 22:54
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    What I find often works better than the site search which Stack Exchange provides is to instead use Google Search and include a special site:english.stackexchange.com term in your search. Stack Exchange uses something called Elasticsearch internally. It's ok but not great. To propose improvements, please visit [meta.se]. They've previously declined to make search a core competency, but that was a long time ago. – tchrist Feb 04 '23 at 22:55
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    The Stackoverflow.com site finds a lot of answers pretty well when searching for technical things. At least, I find it to work pretty well. But for other stacks, a language (i.e. English in our case) based search would work better and I guess using Google is a good idea for that one since they use artificial intelligence which will achieve better results. – Alexis Wilke Feb 04 '23 at 23:05
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    Your first comment did not have much else than the "pay attention, this is a duplicate, I don't like it"... which comes from the "special font" (I guess it's special casing?) and the exaggeration ("hundreds"). "use your ears" is also misplaced. I'm French so my "native pronunciation" is to be taken very carefully. We actually have a similar issue in French where we are not supposed to link words when the next one starts with an "h" but that's not the only rule («un hiboux» is pronounced as two separate words, «un hexagone» we ignore the "h" entirely). – Alexis Wilke Feb 04 '23 at 23:14
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    (original now edited) I don't think hundreds is an exaggeration given that the 5 I linked to collectively have 189 duplicates all by themselves. The system does not allow me to link to more than 5. I can guarantee you that it is more than 200, which I always considered "hundreds". :) If you are not a native speaker then you may not be able to use your ears for English, at least not at first. I'm aware of the two kinds of French h- and what this means there. – tchrist Feb 04 '23 at 23:42
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    It depends on the syllabic emphasis. " ... a his tory of x" "an his toric account of X". Thus, a hexa -decimal number. But an hex agon al figure. If the emphasis is on the first syllable (containing the 'h') then we tend to use 'a'. If the emphasis is on the second, or further, syllable then we tend to use 'an'. The 'h' is softer when not emphasised and lends itself to being strengthened by the additional 'n' of 'an'. – Nigel J Feb 05 '23 at 01:11
  • I’m not sure the question of syllabic emphasis is helpful. If you pronounce the ‘h’ then use “a”. If you don’t (for whatever reason — and you’re free to pronounce it or not) then use “an”. – colinh Feb 06 '23 at 10:29

2 Answers2

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Whether one uses "a" or "an" before a word depends on the sound of the beginning of the following word.

If the following sound is a vowel, then one uses "an". The "n" simply makes it easier to glide from the first vowel "a" to the following vowel.

Since the "h" in "hexadecimal" IS pronounced (aspirated), the word doesn't start with a vowel, and so it should be preceded by "a".

If you "drop the h" from "hotel" or "historic" (pronouncing it "otel" or "istoric") then you should precede these words with "an".

But if you do pronounce the "h", these words have to be preceded by "a".

Conversely, "European" is pronounced a bit like "you-ro-pee-an" where the "y" isn't a vowel. So it's "a European".

colinh
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  • Please do not answer duplicates. – tchrist Feb 04 '23 at 21:20
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    Excluding people who drop most/all h-sounds, many people who say "an historic" still pronounce the "h" in "historic" most of the time. So it's not just about h-dropping, it's also about stress, and about learnt behaviour (because it's not always 100% based on phonetics). – Stuart F Feb 04 '23 at 21:47
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    @StuartF Yes, unnatural hypercorrective affectations do indeed sometimes get unwittingly locked into a personal idiolect by those who know no better. – tchrist Feb 04 '23 at 21:57
  • @tchrist :-) That’s a perl. I’ll try to remember it. – colinh Feb 06 '23 at 09:30
  • I’ve just noticed that I horribly misused the word “precede”. — one thing can precede another. You don’t precede one thing with another. I should have used “prepose”. :-( – colinh Feb 06 '23 at 09:42
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Ngram shows a hexadecimal as vastly more common.

The rule you're quoting is only partially correct. From a Purdue article:

Use "an" before a silent or unsounded "h." Because the "h" does not have any phonetic representation or audible sound, the sound that follows the article is a vowel; consequently, "an" is used.

In other words, it's the sound not the spelling that matters. If the word sounds like it starts with a vowel, the initial letter, h or not, is irrelevant.

jimm101
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  • I am certain you know better than to answer duplicates, let alone one with more than a hundred such. – tchrist Feb 04 '23 at 21:19