Hi again, Friday Folliettes! Today the Grammar Cop will focus on three barfy boo-boos seen in newspapers around these parts:

1. MONTREAL GAZETTE: “…especially when bonafide science reporters find themselves having to…”  The word, or words, I should say, should be bona fide. Meaning, literally, (in) good faith (from the Latin), it’s come to mean genuine or authentic. It is always written as two words, never one.
2. THE SURBURBAN (natch!): “An agency acts as a liaison between our self and different schools to see if…”  Ugh! This one made the Grammar Cop turn green… with nausea, not envy! There is no such entity as “our self.” First of all, the word “our” refers to us, which is plural, not singular, so why would you then add self to it which is singular? It should be selves. AND it should be attached to our, as: ourselves. To write it as two separate words is wrong.
3. HUFFINGTONPOST.COM (technically not a newspaper, but never mind): “Trump also raised party money through a small donor committee called…”  This is what happens when a writer neglects the rules of compound adjectives. They always take a hyphen (when appearing before the noun they are modifying). So, it should be small-donor committee. If the hyphen is not there, an ambiguous meaning results. If you say “small donor committee,” is it a committee made up of small donors? Or is it a donor committee that is small? In the context of this article, it’s clear that it was the former meaning that was intended. It needs a hyphen.

This bona fide Grammar Cop wishes you all a genuinely, authentically wonderful week end.