{"id":951,"date":"2009-03-04T01:37:31","date_gmt":"2009-03-04T06:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?p=951"},"modified":"2009-03-04T01:40:19","modified_gmt":"2009-03-04T06:40:19","slug":"grammar-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?p=951","title":{"rendered":"Grammar Police"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I doubt you&#8217;d be surprised to learn that I am a grammar Nazi. Despite its flaws, I love the richness, complexity, and flexibility of the English language. I grow agitated when people misuse it, especially in print. I address some of my pet peeves on my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?page_id=68\">Writing Pet Peeves<\/a> page, but here are some of the offenders that really get my panties in a bunch:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Realtor <\/strong>&#8211; There are only two syllables in <em>realtor<\/em>: <em>real <\/em>and <em>tor<\/em>. Many people pronounce it as <em>real-a-tor<\/em>. Although the three-syllable version does roll better off the tongue, it is incorrect.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Plurals with Apostophes<\/strong> &#8211; This error is becoming more and more common. In almost every instance I can think of, the correct way to make a word plural is to add <em>-S<\/em> or <em>-ES<\/em> to the end of the word. Apostrophes have two purposes: indicating possession (the bed belonging to the dog is the <em>dog&#8217;s<\/em> bed) or indicating contraction (to shorten <em>do not<\/em> into a single word, replace the missing letter or letters with the apostrophe to form <em>don&#8217;t<\/em>). The plural of <em>brother <\/em>is NOT <em>brother&#8217;s<\/em>, but <em>brothers<\/em>. My family is the <em>Boxes<\/em>, not the <em>Box&#8217;s<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Y&#8217;all<\/strong> &#8211; <em>Y&#8217;all<\/em> is a predominantly Southern word that is a plural version of <em>you<\/em>. Many other languages have singular and plural version of <em>you<\/em>. English didn&#8217;t, so an enterprising person made one up. <em>Y&#8217;all<\/em> is a contraction of <em>you all<\/em>, which is why the apostrophe replaces the <em>ou<\/em>. I often see it spelled incorrectly as <em>ya&#8217;ll<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some of you might think I&#8217;m crazy, or at least unreasonable, for getting so worked up about grammar and spelling. But I also know that some of you are kindred spirits. What are <em>your <\/em>biggest grammatical pet peeves?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I doubt you&#8217;d be surprised to learn that I am a grammar Nazi. Despite its flaws, I love the richness, complexity, and flexibility of the English language. I grow agitated when people misuse it, especially in print. I address some &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/?p=951\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andybox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}