Hey, y'all!

Hey, y'all. Please note where I placed my apostrophe in the word "y'all." After the "y" and before the "all." There is no apostrophe between the "a" and the "ll." As a southerner, it is one of my pet peeves to see this southern colloquialism mis-punctuated. If you are guilty of doing so, don't feel badly, you are not alone. In fact, I often think that I am the only one on the planet who punctuates it correctly. I have seen "ya'll" in novels by famous authors and in big bold type in advertisements. It seems that, while wrong, it is the most often used spelling of the word. When I see it punctuated correctly, I do a double-take. It is that bad.

So, in my lone attempt to remedy America of its mis-punctuation of the word, I will reiterate what we all should have learned in elementary school:

A contraction is a shortening of a word, syllable, or word group by omission of a sound or letter(s). In a contraction, the apostrophe is placed where the omitted letters would be.

Now, I realize that "y'all" wasn't one of the contractions we were taught, because it is a colloquialism, not "proper" English, but it should still obey the rules. (The blogger.com spell check seems to know this, as every time I type "ya'll," it underlines it in red, but lets "y'all" go unchallenged. So kudos to their spell-checking software!) Anyway, please put the apostrophe in its proper place. You wouldn't write "wa'snt" or "d'idnt." So d'ont (ha!) just go placing it willy-nilly in "y'all."

Oh, and surprise, surprise to all those (and there are a lot of you) who think all southerners are dumb rednecks: Some of us are educated rednecks. ;)

Thank y'all for reading. Y'all come back now, ya hear?