Writing Wednesdays – Y’all or Ya’ll

Posted by on Jun 5, 2013

For the love of all that is good in the world, it is “y’all” not “ya’ll”!

Y’all is the contraction of “you” and “all”‘ where the apostrophe takes the place of the “ou” in “you” and also replaces the space between the words. Thus, “you all” becomes “y’all”. It makes no sense to put the apostrophe in the middle of the word “all”.

Also, this is a perfectly acceptable word to use when addressing more than one person. Don’t let the haters try to tell you otherwise.

Get it together, y’all!

4 Comments

  1. Beth Hennings
    June 6, 2013

    Preach it, sister!

  2. lectorsbooks
    June 6, 2013

    This is one writing error that I just do not understand. At the last company I worked for, there was more than one person who used it in emails – which meant they had manually overridden the auto spellcheck in order to send this horrifying example of bad writing.

  3. Stori
    June 11, 2013

    I was in my 20s before I realized it was y’all and not ya’ll. It took me years to break the habit. Keep spreading the word.

  4. lectorsbooks
    June 11, 2013

    Stori, it’s good to hear that even former transgressors can be rehabilitated and go on to be productive members of society! You give me hope. 🙂