One of the things that irks me most about programmers getting involved with marketing is that most of them just don't know grammar.  SEO Black Hat mentioned "Google are," I mentioned "then vs. than," and now I'll mention one more thing -- "a vs. an."  This one is a little different.  Most people know this rule intuitively.  But programmers frequently get lazy and do not look programmatically at the following word to decide which indefinite article to use.  Being a programmer makes me slightly more forgiving, but this still looks bad.  After I release this code, there are no more excuses:

<?

function aOrAn($next_word)
{
    $_an = array('hour', 'honest', 'heir', 'heirloom');
    $_a = array('use', 'useless', 'user');
    $_vowels = array('a','e','i','o','u');
    
    $_endings = array('ly', 'ness', 'less', 'lessly', 'ing', 'ally', 'ially');
    $_endings_regex = implode('|', $_endings);
    
    $tmp = preg_match('#(.*?)(-| |$)#', $next_word, $captures);
    $the_word = trim($captures[1]);
    //$the_word = Format::trimString(Utils::pregGet('#(.*?)(-| |$)#', $next_word, 1));
    
    $_an_regex = implode('|', $_an);
    if (preg_match("#($_an_regex)($_endings_regex)#i", $the_word)) {
        return 'an';
    }
    
    $_a_regex = implode('|', $_a);
    if (preg_match("#($_a_regex)($_endings_regex)#i", $the_word)) {
        return 'a';
    }
    
    if (in_array(strtolower($the_word{0}), $_vowels)) {
        return 'an';    
    }
    
    return 'a';
}

?>

This code may not be bulletproof, but it nails most of the major rules and exceptions.  So if I see one more lazy PHP programmer making this stupid mistake, I'm just closing the window, OK? :)