“A Historic” vs “An Historic”: A PBS Special
In a(n) historic event hosted by your favorite public broadcasting service, two of the greatest grammarians of our time were at linguistic loggerheads for over 16 hours in an epic and heated philological face-off that we think is still going.
And may never end.
The debaters: Phyllis Whistlemaker - Though you may be able to deduce her family's professional origins based on simple etymology, you may not know that she was the author of such groundbreaking books as The History of the word History (and other words and their histories) and also Impersonal Pronouns: A Personal Narrative.
Graham Hurnotzy - A legend in the grammar world, he is best known for reinvigorating the debate over whether or not brands (like Kleenex and Frisbee and Band-Aid) should also be used interchangeably as n...