Page 51 - Perfect English Grammar: The Indispensable Guide to Excellent Writing and Speaking

4.5.3 Y’ALL

Y’all, a contraction of you all, is widely used in informal conversation by

millions of people, especially throughout the southern United States.
It’s a second-person plural pronoun, which means it’s used to refer directly

■to a group of people that may contain both men and women: Y’all should
bring your swimsuits when you come to visit.

While y’all is a perfectly legitimate word, it should be avoided in formal writing
and speech. Instead, use you or you all. Despite it seeming odd, you is the form

for both the singular and plural second-person pronoun. See more in section
10.0, Pronouns.

4.5.4 LET’S IS A CONTRACTION FOR “LET US”.

If you’re using a form of the verb to let, meaning “to allow,” the word will never

have an apostrophe. If you’re unsure whether you’re using the right form,
replace let’s or lets with “let us” to see if the sentence makes sense.

■ Wrong: She let’s him play with the dog. Lets not forget why we
agreed to help.

■ Right: This gauge lets me see the temperature. Let’s go to the
movies.

4.6 Proper Nouns that End in S

We use the same -’s to form the possessive of proper nouns (names; see section
8.7) as we do for other nouns. Where it gets tricky is with names that already end
in -s.

There are a few guidelines that can help you decide how to make the name

possessive.

■ If you say the possessive version of the name as “sez” or “zes” at the

end, as with charlezez for Charles, then use ’s: Charles’s. Don’t spell