“A SEO” or “an SEO”?

I always struggle when I’m talking about or writing SEO and whether it should have an “a” or “an” in front of it.  In my opinion, it seems to flow more naturally when pronounced “an SEO” but from years and years of struggling to stay awake in English class, I was always taught that it would be “a SEO”.

I decided to poll some of the SEO guys here at OrangeSoda and see what they thought:

Alex McArthur: “…probably should be “a SEO”. But I say “an SEO” because it just feels right.”

Luis Bonilla: “..if you spell out the acronym and say “a search engine optimizer,” you would use “a.” If you were to use the acronym, you would use “an SEO.” To me, grammatically it makes more sense to use “an” because you’re actually saying the letter “ess,” and it doesn’t really matter structurally what the “S” stands for, it’s how you actually pronounce it. In my opinion, that’s the reason why saying “an SEO” flows more naturally….”

Mike Cook: “I asked my teacher this same question in my writing for digital media class last semester. It’s “an SEO” because you say it “S – E – O” because S is spelled “ess” when spelled out. So you’re really saying “an ess e o”. Now if you actually sounded out SEO (like NASA, PETA, etc.), saying it “see-yo” or whatever, you would use “a SEO (a see-yo).” But you don’t.”

Claye Stokes: I read a few blogs arguing the issue and asked two English major friends, and the consensus is that it is optional (there is no formal grammatical rule dictating one way or the other) – saying “an SEO” sounds right, but on paper, “a SEO” makes more sense because the written-out phrase that the initialism SEO represents is “Search Eng…”. Another perspective: acronym vs. initialism. NATO is an acronym, which can form a new word (pronounced phonetically, instead of being spelled out). That’s the key difference from an initialism such as BBC or SEO, which does not. If SEO were an acronym, I think we would be required to put “an” in front of it, but as an initialism, it is just an abbreviated form of “Search Engine Optimization” and not a word by itself.

So there you have it…I’ll no longer feel foolish for being confused or using the wrong wording. As Alex so eloquently put it, “it just feels right” so I’ll continue saying “an SEO”.  Another productive day in the books.