Greetings one and all from the Grammar Cop. Sad to say, glitches still abound in this otherwise-happy New Year! 😝 Take a look!

1. [ad] “Place St-Moritz – Private senior’s residence…”
2. “What an original way of explaining this phenomena, something I see endlessly in political discussion but…”
3. “The boy must be no more than nine or ten years old and has stumbled passed a shop window of…”

And the corrections:

1. So apparently this residence only has room for one senior, right? “Senior’s” is singular possessive. But for this ad we obviously need the plural possessive, which would be Private seniors’ residence. (By the way, “Place St-Moritz” is in French, so there is a hyphen between St and Moritz, instead of a period after the St. as we’d write in English.)
2. “Phenomena” is incorrect here, since that is the plural form of “phenomenon.” (Yes! It’s Latin! From Greek!) Here we need the singular: this phenomenon.
3. You can say “he stumbled past a window” or “he passed a shop window.” But to combine the two verb forms here as in “stumbled passed” is wrong! You need to say has stumbled past a shop window. “Past a shop window” is now a phrase in which past acts as a preposition, such as near, by, under, over, around, etc.

The Grammar Cop has now stumbled past this week’s edition of Friday Follies. Tune in next week for more mangled mistakes! 😄