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A Word, Please: Grammar boo-boos can crop up anywhere

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One of the bad things about writing this column is that people who read about grammar are quick to spot grammar mistakes.

One of the good things about this job is that, when a grammar columnist makes a mistake, readers second-guess themselves. “Was it really an error, or does June know something I don’t?”

Sometimes people even think my mistakes are deliberate. I’ve been asked, “Were you testing us?” quite a few times over the years.

That always makes me laugh. Contrary to popular belief, people who write for newspapers don’t spend a lot of time twirling our mustaches and plotting to manipulate readers.

So if you thought that you spotted a typo in this column a few weeks ago, guess what: You did.

The following error appeared in some versions of a recent column: “You need either commas or the coordinating conjunction ‘and’ between the adjectives. Without neither, you have ...”

“Without neither” is just wrong. Though technically there’s no rule against double negation in English, I think we can all agree this is not OK.

I probably inserted the error while revising. Maybe I wrote “without either” and decided “with neither” would be better. Or possibly vice versa. Either way, I messed up. Sorry about that.

Other emails I received this week are more fun to talk about.

For example, reader Marianne had a question about plural possessives. What if, hypothetically, two women are called Boss Lady, not in a generic sense but so consistently that these qualify as official nicknames that must be capitalized. And what if these two ladies got together and hatched a plan.

Would it be the Boss Ladies’ plan, the Boss Lady’s plan or the Boss Ladys’ plan?

Before you answer, consider this: If you have a strawberry and a blueberry, you have berries. But if you’re speaking with Joe Berry and his wife, Jane Berry, you’re speaking to the Berrys.

Proper nouns don’t have irregular plurals the way some generic nouns like berry do. With a proper noun, you always add either S or ES to make the plural.

One Jane, two Janes. One Mary, two Marys. One Chavez, two Chavezes.

Therefore, the plural of the proper noun Boss Lady is Boss Ladys, and to make that possessive you add the apostrophe after the plural S: the Boss Ladys’ plan.

Ed in Newport Beach had a question that I hesitate to report: He asked about “there’s” before a plural, citing an example like “There’s 300 million people …” Shouldn’t that be, Ed wondered, “there are”?

Here’s why I don’t relish writing about this one. I find the truth about “there’s” rather unpleasant. “There’s” in front of a plural is considered idiomatic in many cases. That means it’s OK even though it’s not grammatical. When extra words intervene between “there’s” and the plural noun, it’s especially acceptable. That is, you wouldn’t say “There’s cats” even though you might say “There’s a lot of cats.”

Interestingly, this only works with the contraction. “There is a lot of cats” doesn’t enjoy the same credibility as “There’s a lot of cats.”

So technically, in certain cases, you can get away with “there’s” before a plural. But just between Ed, me and now you: This is a personal peeve of mine. Drives me nuts.

I’m not sure how I got it into my head that in reference to a plural, you always use “there are”: There are cats. There are a lot of cats. There are many cats.

But “there’s” used in place of “there are” always rubs me the wrong way.

JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.

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