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Kathy Petras & Ross Petras

Kathryn Petras and Ross Petras, a sister and brother team, are the authors of many non-fiction books including the New York Times bestseller You’re Saying It Wrong, That Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means, Very Bad Poetry, and Wretched Writing. They also have compiled a series of bestselling quote books such as Age Doesn’t Matter Unless You’re a Cheese and It Always Seems Impossible Until It’s Done, as well as the annual bestselling page-a-day calendar The 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said (now in its 24th year — with over 4.8 million copies sold) and its counterpart The 365 Smartest Things Ever Said. Their work has received the attention of, or has been featured in, diverse media outlets including the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Bustle, the Atlantic Monthly, the London Times, and McSweeney’s. They have also been guests on hundreds of radio shows and tv shows, including Good Morning America, CNN, Fox & Friends, and NPR’s Here and Now.  

Ross collects (and sells) rare books (chiefly early printed books in Latin and Greek).  He reads, writes or speaks, with (very varying) degrees of proficiency Latin, Greek, Arabic and French, and loves reading — and watching – vintage sci fi and 1930s romantic comedy.  Kathy is a noir film and novel fiend, a bad joke aficionado and committer of dreadful puns, a collector and seller of pulp art prints, and is proud to say she was on Jeopardy (but, sadly, came in third – and only won a designer watch). They both are word nuts, quote fiends and (they must admit) sometimes annoying grammar pedants. Their web site is kandrpetras.com.

  • We look at some words that we think are related to other words, but actually aren't. Except sometimes they are.
  • We look at some "rules" of the language that were mostly just made up so people could feel like they were speaking proper English.
  • We run through some particularly confusing grammar mistakes and how sometimes we might think we’re saying one thing when we’re really saying another.
  • We run through a few of the many, many English words that contain silent letters and some of the baffling reasons we pronounce those words the way we do.
  • We dig into why certain words are spelled ridiculously thanks to a bunch of scholars a few hundred years ago who got a little too nutso about making everything look Latin.
  • Some of us like to be rule breakers, but here are a few rules of the English language we can’t help but follow. And we probably don’t even know they exist.
  • We look at what happens when we approach non-English words with a little too much gusto, and how exactly we should be saying foreign words so that we don’t sound silly (a tall order for some of us!).
  • We look at unconscious ways we follow the rules of English by doubling sounds and words, and how meanings of words can change when we say them twice. Now: are you confused? Or are you confused confused?
  • You’re Saying It Wrong is now more than just a podcast!
  • This week we rizz you up (did we say that right?) by looking at what dictionaries picked as the words of the year for 2023!