Hello again, Friday Follies followers! (Say it ten times fast!) Come and see what the Grammar Cop has found for you this week.

1. “To that end, a petition has been set up and we encourage all readers to affix there names to it at the following link:…”
2. “It turns out that I’m not the only one who’s phone habits have changed since getting…”
3. “You can’t set a book the middle of a Hong Kong summer and not include a monsoon or two, as monsoon’s and black rain are common occurrences in this city.”

The corrections:

1. Did this pop out at you: “there names”? It should have! The plural possessive pronoun needed here should be their.  A recap:
   their = plural possessive
   there = adverb meaning in that place
   they’re = a contraction for they are.
2. Oops! Another pronoun error: “who’s” is a contraction for who is, which isn’t what you want here. You need the possessive form: whose: The only one whose phone habits have… Yes, it’s an irregular form of possessive, one we need to memorize.
3. There are two mistakes here, one of which is probably a typo, so I can (barely) overlook it. The word in was left out, between “book” and “the middle.” See the second gaffe? (If you don’t, please re-read all previous 211 Friday Follies instalments. Kidding. Just the last 50 will suffice.) Why does it say “monsoon’s” here? Why the apostrophe-s? One of my great longtime followers, Magick Mermaid, would call this an example of an Apostrophe Catastrophe. It’s a wonderful turn of phrase! No! In this case, there should be NO apostrophe, since “monsoons” is neither possessive nor a contraction for “monsoon is.” On the contrary, it is a simple plural. I repeat: no apostrophe needed. (By the way, there’s irony in the errors here. This sentence was found in a post about the importance of setting when writing a novel. Any piece on writing should be error-free, don’t you agree?)

Bonus boo-boo:

What’s the problem here? Well: his name isn’t Scotland – it’s Stotland. Might be a typo, which the Grammar Cop usually overlooks; but in a name, please, folks, always doublecheck the spelling. If it looks wrong, it probably is. Take it from me – there are probably very few cantors named Adam Scotland. 😄 (A cantor is a singer in a synagogue.) You also might want to shove the closing period inside those quotation marks. In North America, that’s how we roll – commas too. (In Britain they put them outside – commas too.)

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Whew! Well, we’ve finally come to the end of this (I hope) enlightening, enriching, entertaining, and educational Friday Follies post. Your humble (?) Grammar Cop will take two weeks off for the holidays – December 20 & 27; she will return January 3, 2020, none the worse for egg-nog wear! Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and all other holiday greetings too! 😆