Question is- What about a unicorn, a uniform, an umbrella and why then is it correct to say a universe?

Answer: 'A' and 'an' is used before unicorn and universe because the letter 'u' represents the sound 'yuw' and 'y' is a consonant, not a vowel, while in umbrella, the letter 'u' represents a vowel similar to 'uh'.

URL would fall into the same boat: hence - 'a URL' is probably ok.

[ http://www.udel.edu/eli/g15.html ]

Ummm ... an SQL statement ... S is pronounced ess ... hence the an before the vowel sound.

And which is more correct ... an hotel ... a hotel ????

also - Herb. Is the h really silent like you hear on American cooking shows?

I don't think there's right or wrongs to most words that may or may not have a silent H. Americans use 'erb, most other people use Herb. Big_Stu's right in pointing out that simplest way to decide whether to use 'a' or 'an' is to just sound out the initial sound.

eg. an hour away, a herb salad (UK), an herb salad (US), an horrible game (cockney).

Quite a good explanation on the origins of the silent H here...

[ external link ]

More from the oxford dictonary people

[ external link ]

sequel sounds annoying and american to me, after first learning it in a flash tutorial with american voiceovers. it bugs the hell out of me now to call it sequel when S.Q.L is an alternative

am I quicker than heather?

sequel

...it's office admins and managers that pronounce it "ess queue ell".

I did a bit of googling. IBM developed Structured English Query Language (SEQUEL) based on Ted Codd's relational model. SEQUEL evolved into SQL but the developers retained the original pronunciation.

So it would be correct to pronounce it "sequel". I call this the "One Network News Reader pronunciation".

Hmmm ... I've always thought of it as S.Q.L. ... an abbreviation like the AA. That is pronounced "eh-eh" by pretty well everyone I know ....

But then I'm not a programmer ... but I have done some bits and bobs at Massey a good many years back and recall SQL being "spelled out" rather than pronounced ... meh!

//Of course hot linking to random pics without permission makes you a bandwidth stealing pig fucker and nobody wants to be one of those.

Is it actually rule breaking or just pig fucking? What's the etiquette?

I think it's just generally regarded as poor ettiquite (oh dear, where is my spelling today?), although it comes along with copyright issues. For example, if I linked to the image below and said "these are my bazombas" I would be lying, whereas if I linked to them and said "I like these" i'd be hogging bandwidth but not breaking any laws - as far as I know.

[ http://crapshag.co.nz/image/drag2.jpg ]

//i'd be hogging bandwidth but not breaking any laws - as far as I know.

So would it be acceptable-ish to include a link to the site from which you're fucking the pigs? Just wondering cos I'm linking to a couple of images offsite on my own site. I assumed that due to copyright I can't just copy the pics to my own site. But I need something to brighten up my articles..a bit like those sequins...

//I think it's better to copy them to your own server, but say where you got them from.
Ah, excellent. Cheers.

done,
now how do I link that image in photobucket. The url adress - there are 3 below the photo I want to use on photobucket. (i suck at this )

aaahhhahaha! great.