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Magical Mystery T

Read the following sentence silently aloud. (You know what I mean.):

Accommodations are provided by the Snofitel Hotel, a AAA Four Diamond Award-winning resort and spa.

Now, here comes the question:
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.
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Did you hesitate at the article "a" before "AAA"?

I was fascinated to stumble across something like this in my copy editing recently. It had an "a" before "AAA." Most fascinating was that I almost didn't catch this because my mind's ear heard not "a AyAyAy" but "a triple-A," making this perhaps the only vowel-only initialism pronounced as though it begins with a T!

Out of curiosity, I printed this out on a piece of paper and asked two co-workers to read it aloud. Josh, without hesitation, read "... a triple-A ..." Darlene, who had to reach for her glasses, was still trying to adjust her eyes when she began reading aloud. It sounded something like, "a Ayay ... uh, a triple-A ..."

While focused on visual tasks, she began to read it as written. When her brain kicked in with some interpretive help, she found the word "triple" without even realizing what she had done.

Call me nerdy (or bored), but I find that pretty cool. I decided to leave it as-is.

Comments
5 Comment count
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Hmmm.....that didn't even

Hmmm.....that didn't even enter my mind. I saw the article "a" missing an "n" and thought it needed correction. an A A A........

Eric

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Interesting!

Like Josh, I read it as "triple-A" right off the bat.

Huntington Sharp, Red Room

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Huh!

Eric sees it in parts and Huntington sees it as something greater than the sum of its parts -- repeating the Darlene and Josh experiment.

I wonder if that's a cognition thing or some more pedestrian combination of familiarity, chance and computer screen resolutions. Beyond my area of expertise to say.

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If I had to guess...

...I'd say it's because I've had a lifelong association in my mind between the auto club's initials and the phrase "triple-A". I do the same with the oft-visited Russian River Resort up in Guerneville: everyone who knows it calls it "the triple-R," but writes "RRR". But, I wouldn't read ZZZ as "triple-Z," for example.

Huntington Sharp, Red Room

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Writ large

In the olden days (cue violins), way back when  all copy was 'hard', publishers referred to 'an MS', assuming that the reader would not insert Manuscipt in their mind's ear.

I think Eric's got the hang of it here for serious editing. The alternative requires a math brain and impeccable focus!