With the extreme heat advisories and warnings throughout Arkansas this week, it should come as no surprise that my summer crankiness has cranked up a notch or three (hundred).

There’s the usual summer misery of humidity (Michael Storey’s/Otus the Head Cat’s humidity pod columns were funny then, but now it feels like the pods smack you in the face as soon as you leave a building, and I want to smack my now-deceased friend, gone nearly seven years now, for ever coming up with them), which makes staying anywhere without air conditioning dangerous and will have you soaked to your underwear within 15 minutes.

Then there’s the heat which, when combined with storms, makes your yard into a jungle (though according to National Weather Service meteorologist Justin Condry, per reporter Daniel McFadin’s story last weekend, we’re not expecting rain for a while … so maybe the yard will just be crispy). Should you have to get out and tame that jungle, which experts say you shouldn’t during a heat wave, you risk heat exhaustion or heatstroke (been there, done that, and it is not fun; there should at least be less yardwork at the new place once everything’s settled, thank God, and I plan to make as much of the smaller yard disappear as I can, making it much easier to handle myself with a little electric mower I already have).

Add to that my IBS and being overweight, and yep, I’m pretty much over summer and would like it to be autumn right now. Plus, little things keep annoying me, like the near-constant sirens when I’m trying to get to sleep (if you’re anywhere near a hospital, it’s gonna happen, and where I currently am is close, or close-ish, to three hospitals), or the people who insist that their freedom of speech means they have the right to an audience (nope, you can speak freely, but no one has to give you their attention, and that includes newspapers, especially if you refuse to follow rules).

Longtime readers know I’m a word nerd  (can’t help it, words have always fascinated me), and a descriptivist when it comes to grammar, focused on how words are used, not how they’re supposed to be used (prescriptivism) according to grammar rules which are mostly a collection of others’ preferences, holdovers from Latin, etc. My focus is typically conversational grammar, which is a little looser than what’s seen in the rest of the newspaper aside from opinion; in opinion, we tend to write the way people speak. Still, that doesn’t mean that the little prescriptivist grammar grouch is completely absent in me. In summer, that little bugger gets in all sorts of conniptions because, quite frankly, she hates the combination of heat and bad grammar.

A few of the things that have set her off lately:

⚠️ People who don’t use ‘s when denoting possession after names ending with z or x. Grammarly notes that possessive apostrophes are “used with the letters at the end of a noun to show ownership over or a close connection with another noun.” When the noun ends in s in Associated Press and our house style (including proper nouns), you generally just add an apostrophe, but depending on the style guide (MLA, Chicago, etc.), ‘s may be added, even in words ending in s (rule of thumb when submitting for publication anywhere: use the same style the publication uses). If there’s no s at the end, the possessive gets an ‘s. If there’s an x or z at the end, add ‘s; x and z are not s, so just add that ‘s so my inner grammar grouch will hesh up. Yes, Cruz’s and Fox’s; no to Cruz’ and Fox’.

⚠️ People who don’t pluralize correctly. It’s not just the people who use apostrophes to make something plural (in only limited circumstances, such as when leaving the apostrophe out creates confusion is that acceptable), but also the people who just can’t seem to fathom that the same rules that apply to the rest of the language when pluralizing nouns also apply to proper nouns. Most plural nouns take an s at the end unless they’re irregular (like goose/geese and mouse/mice) or end in ch, j, s, sh, x or z (there are other nouns that take different treatment, but we won’t get into that right now). If you are speaking of a family of people, you’d be referring to the Hills, the Gitzes, the Branches, the Maddoxes, etc., and you’ll use an apostrophe only if showing possession.

⚠️ People with a hyphen addiction and/or who use hyphens with -ly adverbs. The general rule is that you use a hyphen in compound words if the meaning would change/wouldn’t be as understandable without the hyphen (there are exceptions, of course, like brand-new). You don’t need hyphens when talking about a $3.1 billion contract (so no $3.1-billion; that dollar sign does enough of the work), or in compound words that have long since been regarded as single words (fundraiser, longtime, teenager, etc.; you date yourself when you hyphenate some of these). But some people feel the need to pepper hyphens throughout their writing, which causes editors to growl (hey, maybe instead of hyphenating every word in a long phrase, which creates nightmares for page designers, you could just not … or use quotation marks instead). But they growl even more when seeing something like “seriously-funny movie”; no hyphen is needed, but a Xanax might be. Or chocolate. Lots of chocolate. Maybe a cat or three as well.

⚠️ People who misplace modifiers. While grammar-grouchy me admits she often laughs at misplaced (or “squinting”) modifiers right along with word-nerdy me, the grammar grouch notes that putting a modifier in the wrong place invites confusion. In general, the modifier should be placed as closely as possible to the word it’s modifying. Using Grammarly’s example, “if you say purple women’s shoes, it sounds like the women are purple, not the shoes. In this case, purple is the misplaced modifier.” Sure, the women might be purple if they’re me or other similarly purple-enamored women, but most likely not. (Not gonna lie; there is serious consideration of a purple accent wall in the bedroom once I’m in the new place and finances have shored up a bit. My hair’s not purple, but I do have the means to put purple streaks in it.)

Those of us in the media have contributed more than a few misplaced modifiers in stories and headlines, and deserve the laughs for something like “Delta has banned the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden for refusing to wear a mask” (from Business Insider). Pretty sure not wearing a mask would have been the least of bin Laden’s sins, but it was the SEAL who refused to wear a mask on a 2020 Delta flight.

Cooler weather can’t come soon enough for me, if only to assuage my grammar grouch.

While she can be momentarily distracted by ice cream (especially Loblolly’s), adorable fur-nephews and nieces, and air conditioning, she’s no fun to be around. In the meantime, please use apostrophes and hyphens responsibly.

Don’t make her break out her therapy tools, which she can swing very well with her right arm. That yard-long dowel has a hook on it (for weighted exercises) and can really hurt.