When extra words intervene between “there’s” and the plural noun, it’s especially acceptable. That means it’s OK even though it’s not grammatical. “There’s” in front of a plural is considered idiomatic in many cases. I find the truth about “there’s” rather unpleasant. Here’s why I don’t relish writing about this one. 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.Įd 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”? With a proper noun, you always add either S or ES to make the plural.

Proper nouns don’t have irregular plurals the way some generic nouns like berry do. But if you’re speaking with Joe Berry and his wife, Jane Berry, you’re speaking to the Berrys. Would it be the Boss Ladies’ plan, the Boss Lady’s plan or the Boss Ladys’ plan?īefore you answer, consider this: If you have a strawberry and a blueberry, you have berries. And what if these two ladies got together and hatched a plan. 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. Other emails I received this week are more fun to talk about.įor example, reader Marianne had a question about plural possessives. Maybe I wrote “without either” and decided “with neither” would be better. I probably inserted the error while revising. Though technically there’s no rule against double negation in English, I think we can all agree this is not OK. The following error appeared in some versions of a recent column: “You need either commas or the coordinating conjunction ‘and’ between the adjectives. So if you thought that you spotted a typo in this column a few weeks ago, guess what: You did. Contrary to popular belief, people who write for newspapers don’t spend a lot of time twirling our mustaches and plotting to manipulate readers. I’ve been asked, “Were you testing us?” quite a few times over the years.

Sometimes people even think my mistakes are deliberate. “Was it really an error, or does June know something I don’t?” One of the good things about this job is that, when a grammar columnist makes a mistake, readers second-guess themselves. One of the bad things about writing this column is that people who read about grammar are quick to spot grammar mistakes.

The ed version of boo