In the sentence It was a usual day should I say a usual or an usual?

Answer 1

I would not say either; it is better to say It was a typical day, or It was an ordinary day. A usual day doesn't sound quite right to me.

Getting to the heart of the question: There is a general rule that if the word following the indefinite article (a) starts with a vowel, then you should use an instead of a. But that is not true in every case. Most 'rules' in English have many exceptions. Probably, most words beginning with y will take a instead of an.

• The Cherry Blossom Festival is a yearly event in Washington, DC.
• They gathered for a Yuletide feast.

Words beginning with u can be tricky. If the u has a sound similar to y as in year, then it would take a instead of an. If the u sounds like the beginning of under, then an is taken.

• The students decided to take a unified approach to solving the problem.
• Fearing an undertow, John stayed out of the water.
• Solange wore an ultra-chic gown.

HERE IS THE TRICK behind the differences in usage above. English speakers want to avoid certain quirky, difficult or unpleasant sounds. If I want to say She has a umbrella, you can hear that there is weird feel to the phrase, and a need to make a gutteral stop, a break in the sound, in order to say the two words, a umbrella, separately. That stop is not a natural or comfortable pattern for most English speakers, and this is why an exists in the first place. It is about the sound, not the spelling. When I say an umbrella, I can continue producing sound with my vocal chords, and the 'n' separates the words. For a couple of special reasons, the problem doesn't exist if the word is yearly, yellow, Yuletide, unicorn, utility, etc. But it does for most other words beginning with the other vowels.

Answer 2

The correct article to use in this sentence is "a usual day" because the word "usual" is pronounced with a consonant sound at the beginning.