YA'LL/Y'ALL

"How y'all doin'?" If you are rendering this common Southernism in
print, be careful where you place the apostrophe, which stands for the
second and third letters in "you." Note that "y'all" stands for "you
all" and is properly a plural form, though many southern speakers treat
it as a singular form and resort to "all y'all" for the plural.

YE/THE

Those who study the history of English know that the word often misread
as "ye" in Middle English is good old "the" spelled with an unfamiliar
character called a "thorn" which looks vaguely like a "Y" but which is
pronounced "TH." So all those quaint shop names beginning "Ye Olde" are
based on a confusion: people never said "ye" to mean "the." However, if
you'd rather be cute than historically accurate, go ahead. Very few
people will know any better.

YEA/YEAH/YAY

"Yea" is a very old-fashioned formal way of saying "yes," used mainly in
voting. It's the opposite of--and rhymes with--"nay." When you want to
write the common casual version of "yes," the correct spelling is "yeah"
(sounds like "yeh"). When the third grade teacher announced a class trip
to the zoo, we all yelled "yay!" (the opposite of "boo"!). That was back
when I was only yay big.

YEAR END AND YEAR OUT/YEAR IN AND YEAR OUT

When something goes on continually, it is traditional to say it happens
"year in and year out," meaning "from the beginning of the year to its
end--and so on year after year."

The mistaken form "year end and year out" doesn't make sense because
"year end" and "year out" both refer to the same part of the year, so no
time span is being described.

YING AND YANG/YIN AND YANG

The pair of female and male terms in Chinese thought consists of "yin
and yang," not "ying and yang."

YOKE/YOLK

The yellow center of an egg is its yolk. The link that holds two oxen
together is a yoke; they are yoked.

YOU CAN'T HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO/YOU CAN'T EAT YOUR CAKE AND HAVE
IT TOO

The most popular form of this saying--"You can't have your cake and eat
it too"-- confuses many people because they mistakenly suppose the word
"have" means "eat," as in "Have a piece of cake for dessert." A more
logical version of this saying is "You can't eat your cake and have it
too," meaning that if you eat your cake you won't have it any more. The
point is that if you eat your cake right now you won't have it to eat
later. "Have" means "possess" in this context, not "eat."

YOUR/YOU

"I appreciate your cleaning the toilet" is more formal than "I
appreciate you cleaning the toilet."

YOUR/YOU'RE

"You're" is always a contraction of "you are." If you've written
"you're," try substituting "you are." If it doesn't work, the word you
want is "your." Your writing will improve if you're careful about this.

If someone thanks you, write back "you're welcome" for "you are
welcome."

YOUR GUYS'S/YOUR

Many languages have separate singular and plural forms for the second
person (ways of saying "you"), but standard English does not. "You" can
be addressed to an individual or a whole room full of people.

In casual speech, Americans have evolved the slangy expression "you
guys" to function as a second-person plural, formerly used of males only
but now extended to both sexes; but this is not appropriate in formal
contexts. Diners in fine restaurants are often irritated by clueless
waiters who ask "Can I get you guys anything?"

The problem is much more serious when extended to the possessive: "You
guys's dessert will be ready in a minute." Some people even create a
double possessive by saying "your guys's dessert. . . ." This is
extremely clumsy. When dealing with people you don't know intimately,
it's best to stick with "you" and "your" no matter how many people
you're addressing.

YOURSELF

In formal English it's safest to use "yourself" only after having
earlier in the same sentence used "you." When the British reply to a
query like "How are you?" with "Fine, and yourself?" they are actually
pointing back to the "you" in the query.

It used to be common to address someone in British English as "Your good
self" and some people have continued this tradition by creating the word
"goodself," common especially in South Asia; but this is nonstandard.

YOUSE/YOU

The plural form of "you" pronounced as "youse" is heard mainly in satire
on the speech of folks from Brooklyn. It's not standard English, since
"you" can be either singular or plural without any change in spelling or
pronunciation.

YOU'VE GOT ANOTHER THING COMING/YOU'VE GOT ANOTHER THINK COMING

Here's a case in which eagerness to avoid error leads to error. The
original expression is the last part of a deliberately ungrammatical
joke: "If that's what you think, you've got another think coming."

ZEROSCAPE/XERISCAPE

If you nuke your front lawn I suppose you might call it a "zeroscape,"
but the term for an arid-climate garden requiring little or no watering
is "xeriscape" (-xeri is a Greek root meaning "dry").

ZERO-SUM GAIN/ZERO-SUM GAME

The concept of a zero-sum game was developed first in game theory: what
one side gains the other loses. When applied to economics it is often
contrasted with a "win-win" situation in which both sides can make gains
without anyone losing. People who are unaware of the phrase's origins
often mistakenly substitute "gain" for "game."

ZOOLOGY

Both O's in "zoo" are needed to create the "oo" sound in this word; but
the same is not true of words like "zoology" and "zoologist." Here each
O has its own sound: "oh" followed by "ah." The first two syllables rhyme
with "boa."

Then there is a whole class of technical words like "zooplankton" where
both O's are pronounced "oh," though the second "oh" is pronounced so
weakly it comes out more like "uh." But if you need to speak such words,
you probably know how to pronounce them already.