# EN: three R / three R's / three Rs



## fransua

bonsoir

Est-ce qu'une lettre de l'alphabet s'accorde ?

Exemple :

"The three R" or "the three R's" ?

Merci


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## Gerdihono

"the three R's" definately


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## SwissPete

But why the apostrophe?

I would definitely write "the 3 Rs".


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## gumonmysoul

The apostrophe is NOT used to indicate pluralization in English.  It is commonly misused, however.


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## bloomiegirl

My choice would be "the three Rs," since the "R" is capitalized. I'd reserve the use of the apostrophe for lower case letters ("mind your p's and q's"), and a few other rare instances.  Some sources: Wiki, Meredith College, Chicago Manual of Style FAQ, but there are many others.

[Hello Pete  ]


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## mizbooty

gumonmysoul said:


> The apostrophe is used to indicate pluralization in English.  It is commonly misused, however.



I think you might be mistaken.  Apostrophe S is typically used for possession (belonging to whatever came before the apostrophe), not pluralization.   http://www.write101.com/sample.htm

 I would say three Rs, as well, especially if you mean Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic (where the apostrophe replaces the missing letters)


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## gumonmysoul

Whoopsies, I misspoke (or mis-typed, rather).  I meant to say it is NOT used to indicate pluralization.  Hah.  So much for my comment!  I'll fix it.  Thanks!


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## gumonmysoul

Haha, yes I think you can do that when there's a possibility of confusion, but people do it incorrectly all the time.  You see people pluralizing normal words like dog with an apostrophe.  I think A's might be one of several cases of confusion, but something like 'I got all Cs this semester" wouldn't be confusing.  Though, now that I'm looking at it, I might actually say "C's" there.  Erg.


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## bloomiegirl

"Of course, if you come across a plural that would be misunderstood without an apostrophe, you should use one: for instance, in A’s and B’s, the first term would be mistaken for “As” without an apostrophe, and the second term uses the apostrophe because it would look inconsistent to style them in different ways..." [source: Chicago Manual of Style FAQ]

But the example in this thread was "the three Rs," which is not subject to such confusion... and therefore does not take an apostrophe.


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## gumonmysoul

Yea, I agree.  Consistency matters, but even without that, I feel like Bs looks weird.  B's and C's looks better.  Maybe we should consult that jerks Strunk and White on this one.  Haha.

I found this:

http://www.english-test.net/forum/ftopic14784.html


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## bloomiegirl

[...]

It's still the "three Rs" according to the style manuals I've seen, and Gumonmysoul's link (nice compendium ) too.

[...]


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## Davantage

As an editor in Canada, where we also often have to consult American style guides, I affirm that the apostrophe is not proper or condoned usage but is a common mistake.


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## gumonmysoul

Seems like the general opinion is split.  Check out what Wikipedia has to say about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_plural#Plurals_of_symbols_and_initialisms

I think it looks better with them, but obviously I'm against people misusing this form  by extending it to general pluralization.  The thing is, though, that it's really a moot point, as orthography and spelling rules are man-made, artificial systems we have applied to natural language.  It just so happens that in English, the plural and the possessive markers sound the same and we differentiate between them in writing by using an apostrophe.  Can you tell I study linguistics?  Haha.


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## Davantage

I just don't think the apostrophe needs any ambiguity of function; let it be a possessive only. (1920s = Nineteen twenties ; 1920's = Nineteen twenty's... er...)

Language is also a human construction. The rules of its use are huge abstractions from anything natural and/or concrete (including the shape of our mouths; including the abstraction from there to making different shapes of air currents; including the major abstraction from there to perceiving and assigning semantic meaning to the shape of sounds in the air... let alone the rules governing how those are supposed to fit together)! Orthographic rules being abstractions again should not surprise us, or seem out of form or "different" from the nature of language. Can you tell I study linguistics? But by now this is far removed from the purpose of this thread...


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## gumonmysoul

Well, considering it is a huge divergence from the topic at hand, I'll just say that I totally disagree that language is a human construction.  We evolved to be able to produce the sounds we use to speak and, yes, the semantic meanings we attribute to the sounds we produce are completely arbitrary, but you can't ignore that we didn't evolve naturally to be able to function this way.  And if you've ever studied language acquisition, you'll know that there is clearly some predisposition to language that we have, which I would argue is naturally developed.  Anyway, off topic...


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## bloomiegirl

Oops! The New York Times uses "the Three R's"! Now I am not proud of my hometown newspaper for that! It flies in the face of the _Chicago Manual_ and _The Copyeditor's Handbook_ from the University of California Press.


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## Keith Bradford

Honestly, this is an area where rules do more to help than to hinder. Particularly where many are written for one purpose or publication only. 

But to come to the case in point. Would any of us say, "*This author repeatedly misses the accents off his lower-case as and es*"? (We're talking about lower-case here, so don't cheat by changing it to As and Es!) I bet we'd all put the apostrophe in, and this is what's recommended by the British writer Lynne Truss in her excellent book _Eats, shoots and leaves_, Profile Books, 2003.


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## Davantage

Well, I would capitalize or italicize them, as I do when naming letters or other symbols bare. (If it were terribly important, I would enclose them in quotes or single-quotes. I do not think the qualifier "lowercase" means much as to how I spell the word, as in "He never capitalizes Canada.") Those things' uses are plenty ambiguous already, but the apostrophe need not be soiled.


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## bloomiegirl

The style guides take Keith's approach for lower case letters.  
For instance, when discussing _Plurals_, "Chicago Style uses an apostrophe for the plural of lowercase single letters (_x’s_ and _o’s_), but for little else..."


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