An Historical Novel or a Historical Novel? A Case of Variation in Spelling

Abstract

The form of the indefinite article before h is not an easy matter, as mentioned among others, by Jespersen, in A Modern English Grammar. The existence today of written corpora and other online resources allows for a wider and, hopefully, a more reliable examination of variants. The present paper presents the results obtained from an analysis of the forms of the indefinite article before words beginning with h found in the Gutenberg corpus, therefore, in literature, and in The British National Corpus (BNC). Quantitative data are presented and accounted for in a synchronic and diachronic perspective.