How to Properly Write the Plural of a Single Letter

You won’t often find that you need to write about single letters, but there are still rules that you need to follow. Single letters used slightly different plural forms compared to regular nouns. This article will explain all there is to understand about them.

How to Properly Write the Plural of a Single Letter

When writing a single letter’s plural, you need to add an “s” at the end of it. There are two ways to do this. For capital letters, you only need to include a lower-case “s.” For lower-case letters, an apostrophe must come between the letter and “s.”

To help you visualize it, you can refer to these two examples:

• As
• a’s

When “A” is a capital letter, it already stands out in the sentence. You do not need to include an apostrophe after it. The lower-case “s” is all you need for the plural form.

When “a” is in the lower case, you need to put an apostrophe between the letter and the “s” to show the plural form. Without the apostrophe, you would have “as,” which is already a word. This could be quite confusing and look strange in most cases.

Do You Use an Apostrophe for Plural Letters?

According to The Chicago Manual of Style (which is a common style guide used in English), apostrophes are only needed for lower-case letters. When you are writing the plural of a letter, you only need to include apostrophes for lower-case letters.

The reason for the apostrophe is to help separate the plural letter from the rest of the phrase.

Without an apostrophe, a plural letter could look strange in a sentence:

• Correct: I’ll review the q’s they gave later today.
• Incorrect: What’s the point of all of these qs?

If the apostrophe is left out, the plural letter form looks bizarre. It looks like a typo or a mistake that shouldn’t have been included in the sentence.

Example Sentences with Capital Letters

If you want to see how capital letters become plural, you can refer to the following examples:

1. His name is Karlos Kartinon. That’s with two Ks before you ask me.
2. I thought it was supposed to be with three Qs and one T. Why are we spelling it in that way?
3. Isn’t this supposed to be written with six Ts? I don’t see how that would make sense, but that’s how it’s written here.
4. Make sure you’re capitalizing the Ts and Is to make them really stand out on the page. Don’t be foolish with them.
5. Aren’t we meant to capitalize all the Ks, Ls, and Ms here? Basically, all the consonants need to be capitalized.

Since capital letters already stand out in a sentence, you can simply place an “s” after them. These rules are identical to how you would normally write plural forms for other nouns. You do not have to add anything extra or overthink it.

Example Sentences with Lower-Case Letters

Since lower-case letters follow slightly different rules, you can refer to these examples to help you out:

1. I’m going to need you to cross the t’s and dot the i’s. It’s the only way that we can guarantee this is going to sell well.
2. Make sure you’ve set up all your p’s and q’s before the end of this. You need to know what’s coming next.
3. How many a’s did you say we would need to come up with to answer most of the questions they throw at us?
4. I’m sorry, but the b’s and c’s aren’t worth my time. I need to make sure I’m working harder to get the grades I want.
5. What’s the point to all of these o’s? Aren’t they making the word a little too difficult to read?

Lower-case letters generally need an apostrophe after them to show the plural form. This helps to show that the plural form is being used; otherwise, you’d have to use “ps” instead of “p’s,” which can cause confusion for some readers.

Final Thoughts

When you are using the plural form of single letters, you have two choices. For capital letters, you only need to add a lower-case “s” to the end. For lower-case letters, you also need to include an apostrophe before the “s.” This helps to differentiate the two forms.