Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Pet Peeve #14

Here in the South we have a great tradition of unique lexicon. (That's fancy-speak for regional dialect or "Dixie-speak.") One of the things I love about living in Texas is that everyone (native anyway) says y'all. You can tell when someone is from up North, because they say "yous guys" or "you guys."

Anyway, on to my peeve. It drives me up the freaking wall, not just as a Texan but also as an English teacher, when I see someone who decides to write y'all in the following manner:

1. ya'll
2.yall.

Hello? People! It's a contraction! That means that it's a combination of two words, "you"+ "all"= "y'all!" That little "comma in the sky?" That's an apostrophe, and it represents the dropped letter(s): "ou!" That means, you HAVE to write it as Y-apostrophe-a-l-l. Any other way changes the meaning! It turns into ya + (?)ll! Everyone knows those aren't words!

Got it?

Good!

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous3:44 AM

    I'm with you on this, Dee.

    Now for my big confession. I once caught myself typing "all y'all."

    Groan.

    Janee

    ReplyDelete

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