> > Perhaps some sort of chronologer of medical officers... keeping records of the life and death of all of them. An historian, not a medical officer himself.
>
> What's the point of saying "an historian"? Try saying it - it sounds awkward. "A historian" is much better. If you pronounce the h, that is. If you say "An 'istorian", that's okay. But if you pronounce the "h", that's a consonant and you don't need the "n". Maybe we should just eliminate all "h"s at the beginnings of words, they don't serve any purpose and they only cause sticky situations in which you don't know whether or not to put "an" or "a". Kinda like final "e"s. Those annoy me, too.
>
> Uni"'elp, 'elp, 'ow am i supposed to pronounc anything anymor?"peg

Good to see someone else takes those arbitary rules about "a" before consonants and "an" before vowels as seriously as I do. In an universe the size of this one, that kind of regimentation is an useful way to provide an uniform system everyone can understand.

Prescriptive "but unfortunately not ubiquitous" grammerian