gripe from a lurker (a/an)

[Scott Swanson]

That's odd. I find the use of (a) in the quoted American Heritage
Dictionary passage quite jarring to both eye and ear. I'm not a linguist
and don't know the terminology for it, but I find my pronunciation of the
(h) in the unstressed first syllable of "historic/al" to be vocalic enough
to require (an); whereas the stress it receives in "history" pushes the (h)
far enough into the consonantal realm that (a) seems more natural.

Scott Swanson
==a Montanan de-lurking briefly.