John in Tucson, Arizona, remembers his grandfather used the possessives hisn, hern, yourn, and ourn, as in Those cattle are hisn or That house is hern. These archaic forms originated hundreds of years ago, formed by analogy with mine and thine...
If you have two dogs that share a toy, do you write that as my dogs’ toy or my dogs’s toy? It’s one of those things to which we can come up with a logical answer, but then later we’ll catch ourselves doing a different...
Bathroom walls, missing graffiti, and social media. Where have all the cute quips on bathroom stalls gone? We wonder about the apparent decline of restroom graffiti. Are people saving their witticisms for Twitter and Facebook? And: If there were a...
There’s no definite rule for putting the apostrophe “s” after names like Liz or Alex when talking about Liz’s wedding or Alex’s school, but we know for certain that most people say, and write out, the possessive...
If you go to a department store, you’ll see the Men’s department, the Women’s department, and the Children’s department. So why do so many stores have a department that’s called simply “Baby”? Grant...
Hello, fellow wordies! We hope this week’s archive edition isn’t “a few pickles short of a jar” or “a few peas short of a casserole.” We talk about these and other phrases for “not measuring up.” Also:...