Kathy Petras & Ross Petras
Hosts, You're Saying It WrongKathryn 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.
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No, this time the F isn't for for Fail, it's for Fun! And Fantastic! And Fabulous! We return to our series looking at the hardest words ever found on the SAT with a dive into the English alphabet's sixth letter. -
Hey everyone, a little bit of bad news this week. We weren’t able to record a new show due to some unforeseen circumstances. But you can always dive back into our podcast feed and catch up on past episodes. We'll be back with a new episode next week. -
A listener email prompts us to try to get a handle on Irish spellings and pronunciations. It doesn't go well! -
What happens when you remove an entire verb from the English language? Chaos! Well, not quite. But it used to cause Kathy quite a bit of consternation. Also: we try to nail down the correct spellings of various grunts and murmurs. -
We tackle a few listener emails about some unusual pet peeves, including people tacking an extra sound on the end of the word "height," and another wondering why people say they want to "try and" do something. -
We'll dive into some common mistakes and pet peeves we have regarding the literary world, and then Kathy and Ross challenge Fletcher to another round of "Related... Or NOT??"
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Pet peeves, grammar groaners, and other language catastrophes are on the agenda this week, as we come up with a rock-solid rule grammatical rule that no one will ever question or disagree with.
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Homonyms, synonyms, antonyms... we'll look at some "wordly" similarities and differences, and explore the vague space in between.
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We'll look at the surprising origins of some common summer-related words, phrases, and idioms.
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Collectable or collectible? Why is it a computer and not a computor? Or is it? We look at the confusing and sometimes (seemingly) chaotic world of suffixes.
