All Right, People. Listen Up.

There are some words you are all mispronouncing, and I frankly cannot live another day without straightening you out.

Evidently I am the only creature on God's green earth who can pronounce the word FAMILIAR.It is FAH-miliar, not FUR-miliar. Think about it--who looks more familiar than anybody else? Your damn family, of course. FAMILY-AR, get it? It's got nothing to do with FUR, unless you were raised by cats or something.

Next on my list is RIDICULOUS. It is RID-iculous, as in, "You are so ridiculous I must get RID of you." The word is not RE-diculous, as in "Please RE-read the dictionary because I am afraid you are RE-tarded."

Weathermen take note of this news flash: the word TEMPERATURE has TWO R's in it! It's temp-RA-ture, not temp-A-ture.

Similarly, Tom Shane please be advised that although you have marred the best years of my life with your boring jewelry commercials, you are mispronouncing the word jewelry. Stop calling it JEWL-A-RY. No A between the L and the R, see?

People please, oh please, stop saying SUPPOSABLY. The word is SUPPOS-ED-LY, and don't even kid yourself that you're getting away with saying it wrong. It's not that nobody notices or minds that you're mangling the word. It's just that we thought you were fairly bright until you said that, and now our disappointment in your intellect or the lack thereof has rendered us temporarily mute.

This is a usage, rather than a pronounciation, but I would like to surprise every redneck in Georgia by announcing that a LICENSE is an IT and not a THEM. Do not say, "I lost my license but I can git 'em renewed later." You can get IT renewed; it's just ONE license. I know that "s" sound at the end confuses y'all, but if you're smart enough to drive a car, you ought to be able to master this little concept. (Note: if what you have is a hunting license, feel free to go ahead and call it a "them." Your friends aren't going to notice.)

Please be advised that the phrase A LOT consists of two separate words. Do not write "alot," as in, "I don't read alot."

I feel very sad for the poor word TOO. Everybody seems to understand what TWO means. And everybody uses TO when numbers are not involved. But the poor, unloved word TOO gets left by the wayside. Folks, that's the one we use when we mean ALSO. As in, "I'm glad you don't read a lot 'cause I'm ignorant TOO."

And finally--now that we're onto spelling--the granddaddy of them all. Apparently a whole lot of people were absent from second grade on the day they taught us the difference between YOUR and YOU'RE. And it's so simple; look at the handy little apostrophe (that's the little thingy between the U and the R) that fills in for the left-out A. YOU ARE, get it? And it does matter--I swear it does--unless you just don't mind being considered dumber than a second-grader. See, YOUR is the possessive--as in, "You neglected YOUR education."

By now you're probably thinking, "YOUR a boring snob." And I just want you to know that--well--YOUR SUPPOSABLY my friends, you know? And your RE-diculous attitude has hurt my feelings. ALOT.