Pronunciation Clarification + Possible Small Improvement?

[replacem3nts]

Hi folks,

New rustacean here, reading the book during on off hours to pick up this excellent language.

• Ch12 of the ebook version (retrieved 1/11/23) uses 'an' vs. 'a' in the text and returns an std::io::Result<String> of the file’s contents. Screenshot below.

  

• Could not find the commit where this was changed, since current src uses 'a' located at line

Point being: 'an' sounded wrong to my ear because of an assumption I'd made, but when I thought about it, it's not clear to me which is correct since I don't know whether the abbreviation for the standard library is commonly pronounced as letters: 'ess-tee-dee eye-oh' or as the word it abbreviates: 'standard eye-oh.'

1. What is actually commonly used?
2. If there's a clear answer, I'd be happy to open a small PR adding the result to this line

It's pretty small, but personally, I feel knowing conventions such as this can prevent later micro-embarrassments when you refer to a thing in a non-standard way in conversation.

Thanks!

[chriskrycho]

A small detail, but I think you’re right! I suspect (though I haven’t dug through Git history to prove it) that this probably once read “an io::Result<String>” instead, which would make more sense. I have never heard someone pronounce std in a way that would make sense with “an”! The most common pronunciations I have heard are:

• “standard”
• roughly “stood”, the way most English speakers say something like this without a vowel
• very rarely, “ess tee dee“, which I suppose would make sense with “an”, but I think the only time I have heard someone say it this way was when they were disambiguating what they meant by pronouncing it like “stood”.

If you still have the inclination, a PR changing it to “a” would be welcome!