Ebbie said: Ah, but clueless don, you are indeed allowed to rephrase the statement! Just as one does as needed in a song or poem or an essay... Besides which, 'The letter 'a' occurs five times in the
word' is a better sentence.

As (not A's) a court reporter, I write down and later transcribe the language of live speakers, and they choose the sentence structure; my function is only to present their speech in the most readable form I can. And if refers to sets of plural A's, that's the appropriate way to do it. I don't have the luxury of recasting the sentence.

Dave Oesterreich