[Ads-l] Roe vee Wade

[Stanton McCandlish]

> In Britain and Ireland one would say and write Roe v. Wade.

Same in the US.  The spelling "v." is legal usage; "vs." is a sports and
other general usage. However, there's no *requirement* to pronounce "v." as
"vee" rather than "versus". It's just common with regard to the legal
usage. I'm not a lawyer but I worked daily with civil-liberties attorneys
for a decade, and they always said it "vee" in this context, while they
might have spoken of "Rahman versus Lewis" for the Rahamn vs. Lewis 2001
world heavyweight boxing championship.

The full case name is *Roe et al. v. Wade, District Attorney of Dallas
County*.
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep410/usrep410113/usrep410113.pdf


On Fri, Sep 20, 2024 at 12:26 PM Michael Everson <everson at evertype.com>
wrote:

> In Britain and Ireland one would say and write Roe v. Wade.
>
> Michael Everson
> http://evertype.com
>
> > On 20 Sep 2024, at 20:24, James Landau <
> 00000c13e57d49b8-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
> >
> > It seems to me that most public references to the Supreme Court case
> "Roe vs. Wade" call it "Roe vee Wade" rather than "Roe versus Wade".
> > I believe I have heard lawyers refer to Supreme Court cases as "X vee Y"
> but I don't recall hearing laypeople (such as newscasters) using "X vee Y'
> rather than "X versus Y" e.g. "Brown versus Board of Education" not "Brown
> vee Board of Education".
> > Am I tone deaf or is there a trend here?
> > James Landau
> > jjjrlandau at netscape.com
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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