It seems that many of us have word processors that correct our spelling. Even Blogger, the host of my various screeds, seems quite unwelcoming to my support of the letter U in the word honour or honourable (It underlines every one just as my primary school teachers did). Some of these programs correct words automatically the moment the space following the word is entered. But what is really important is that many of the word-processor-using public, it seems, are apparently unaware that word processors and their developers did not invent and are not familiar with the languages we speak.
It is how you and I and all those that preceded us speak that determines languages and their use - not the written word! Sometimes the written word is our only guide, such as in ancient texts. But language is a living thing that exists in our conversation and heads. It wasn't developed in source code.
The fact that some bit-napper with a penchant for creating rules such as "Nouns beginning with the letter H must be be preceded by An and not A" and simultaneously holds a job in the software industry does not make him or her right. Neither does that get anyone using the word processor off-the-hook for allowing themselves to write wrong in text editors.
It is altogether a different story when people purposely choose to use acronyms and dubious time-saving spelling devices such as "l33t", "LMAO", and the perfect target for derisive arrows, "<3". Whether or not you find these devices of typed text in our language a boon or a bane, there is actually a protocol followed. Even among those of us who avoid these acronyms like plague understand and follow the logic, or illogic, if that is your perception of them. We are aware that little Johnny and Janey L33t-Sp3kker (Yes, northern-European forms exist), are employing well understood forms of written language.
The rule "Any H-word preceded by 'A' should be changed to 'An'" is not a device that any person speaking agrees with "in all situations". There is one quite obvious reason that is observable in practically all speech wherein this rule has occasion to be followed and it is determined solely by how the word beginning with the letter H is spoken. It is so simply observed, or heard, that even a Hello_World programmer of any stripe can master it.
When the H is audible, as stressed and quite clearly distinguished when the H-word is spoken, it is preceded by 'A', such as a horse, a horticultural centre, and a horrible day at the keyboard. When the H is not audible, as in when the existence of the letter H, or it's removal from the spoken word does not alter how the word is spoken, then it is preceded by 'An', such as an hour, an honourable person. As spoken, our and on-or-able is identical, when spoken, to hour and honourable in most spoken English and English variants. If it is spoken in this manner, it should be preceded by 'An'. If the H is clearly stressed when spoken, it should not be.
Even when English speakers use H-words differently than others do, they still follow the rules I outline here. To people in United Kingdom that talk about their friend Harry, he is either an 'Arry or a Harry, depending solely on how they speak his name. Anyone giving Harry full value will say "Oh, he's a Harry of the first order" while others will suggest "'e's an 'Arry I'm proud to be acquainted with."
Why do word processors fail to account for this and saddle us with programs that incorrectly alter our written noun-ish H-words?
Convenience or an aversion to making their rule-ridden, correction-happy word processing sloth become even more glacial by adding a single rule that requires each instance it's used to reference a word list in memory as big as the document itself before it impliments the correction.
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