The Redbook by Bryan Garner says this: She received all A's on the report. But: She received Bs and Cs on the reports (if no A's are mentioned). My question is, if she had received A's, Bs, and Cs on the reports, would we punctuate it like that (that is, the -’s after the A, but not after the B and C)? So the sentence would be punctuated thus: She received A's, Bs, and Cs on the reports. Is the bolded sentence above correct according to Garner's advice? I'm struggling to understand this for some inexplicable reason. Thank you.
I don't understand why it wouldn't either be She received A's, B's, and C's on the reports. or She received As, Bs, and Cs on the reports. Is it a vowel thing? Is it because As is a word but Bs and Cs aren't? Or is the source just wrong?
I assume it's because As can be mistaken for the word 'as', so an apostrophe can improve clarity even if it's wrong. But I would be more bothered by the wrongness, and the inconsistency, than any momentary confusion over As. Besides, the context would make it clear. So I would always write As, Bs, and Cs.
Based on Garner, the correct punctuation would be The " 's " is used after the "A" for clarity, and because you also have two other letters, you should be consistent by using apostrophes. I was taught to always use " 's " to indicate the plural of single letters for legal documents to remove all ambiguity. This is not the way a lot of style guides do it, so unless you're writing a legal document, I recommend you follow a guide such as The Chicago Manual of Style.
I recently had a manuscript come back from an editor with all the letter-noun things revised this way: 'A's ; 'B's ; 'C's I had never seen it that way before--the single quotes bracketing the letters. Like not even once. I meant to ask her about it but never did. There doesn't seem to be a hard rule for it. And if there is, it seems to be loosely applied/enforced. Weird. ETA: Actually, if I remember correctly, I originally had the letters spelled out phonetically. I think I was talking about "ells and effs" in the context of somebody's thick accent. Can't remember if it was in dialogue or not. Can't see why else I would have spelled them out if it was in prose.
