[Ads-l] Your guys's garage

[Ben Yagoda]

Thanks to Jonathan for the excellent research and to Emily (I think) for sensing I would be semi-obsessed with this. I somehow missed JL’s 2023 post and, a couple of months ago, discussed the Ring ad on Facebook.

One data point to add: my millennial-age daughter refers to my wife and me as “you guys” and for some time has used the “your guys’” possessive. Currently, she pronounces it “your guyses”; I’m not 100% certain but I think she recently switched from “your guys.”

Ben

Linktree of published pieces: https://linktr.ee/benyagoda



> On Jan 3, 2026, at 12:00 AM, ADS-L automatic digest system <LISTSERV at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> wrote:
> 
> Date:    Fri, 2 Jan 2026 16:32:54 -0500
> From:    Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM <mailto:wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>>
> Subject: Re: "Your guys's garage..."
> 
> And check this out:
> 
> 1959 Curtis L. Johnson _Hobbledehoy's Hero_ (Cleveland, O.: Pennington
> Press) 505: "Well," he said, "it's none of your guys' business."
> 
> https://archive.org/details/hobbledehoyshero0000unse/page/n7/mode/2up?q=%22guys%27+business%22
> <https://archive.org/details/hobbledehoyshero0000unse/page/n7/mode/2up?q=%22guys%27+business%22>
> 
> Internet Archive dates this "1949," but the copyright date is clearly
> "1959."
> 
> JL
> 
> On Fri, Jan 2, 2026 at 4:11 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com <mailto:wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>>
> wrote:
> 
>> Thanks, Emily. That 2002 ex. got me looking further.
>> 
>> 1980 _Spokesman-Review_ (Spokane, Wash.) (Dec. 7)  A22 [Newspapers.com <http://newspapers.com/>]:
>> The teens blinked the car headlights at the robber, and he pulled into a
>> tavern parking lot....He said, "What's your guys' problem? You following me
>> or something?"
>> 
>> That, of course, was 45 years ago - say, two generations?  I would have
>> said "You guys'" with one / z /.
>> 
>> Paul Brians, of Washington State [n.b.] University pointed this out in his
>> "Common Errors in English" so long ago as 2008, p. 227:
>> 
>> 
>> https://archive.org/details/common-errors-in-english-paul-brians/page/n227/mode/2up?q=%22your+guys%27s%22
>> 
>> JL
>> 
>> On Fri, Jan 2, 2026 at 3:19 PM Emily Gordon <
>> 0000205244c4ee9d-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu <mailto:0000205244c4ee9d-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu>> wrote:
>> 
>>> I had a hunch Ben Yagoda would have written about this, and I was right.
>>> Here’s a piece in New York magazine from 2016 quoting Ben’s Lingua
>>> Franca piece:
>>> 
>>> What’s beautiful about language is that people will modify it to suit
>>> their
>>> needs, especially when the language is flimsy around a certain use case.
>>> In
>>> contemporary English, the second-person plural sticks out awkwardly: How
>>> do
>>> you address a group of people? *You guys, y’all, youse?* It gets even
>>> flimsier in the possessive: How do you ask a group of people about
>>> something of theirs, like their bathroom, their phone?
>>> 
>>> Well, as Ben Yagoda observes
>>> <
>>> http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2016/11/01/your-guys-opinion/>
>>> at
>>> the *Chronicle of Higher Education*’s Lingua Franca blog, you do what
>>> Americans do best: innovate. Around the turn of this century, a new usage
>>> popped into the vernacular: *Your guys’. *Like a caller ringing the
>>> spectacular “Car Talk” radio show: “I wanted to get your guys’ opinion.”
>>> Or
>>> in the millennial tour de force, *Napoleon Dynamite*: “Hey, can I use your
>>> guys’s phone for a sec?” Or what Yagoda has as the earliest entry in
>>> Google
>>> Books, from a 2002 novel called *Impeachment: *“Well, it is, but that is
>>> your guys’s problem.”
>>> 
>>> New York magazine’s “The Cut”:
>>> 
>>> https://www.thecut.com/2016/11/your-guys-is-american-english-at-it-roughspun-best.html
>>> 
>>> Ben in Lingua Franca:
>>> https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/your-guys-opinion
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Jan 2, 2026 at 3:55 AM Jonathan Lighter <
>>> 00001aad181a2549-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu <mailto:00001aad181a2549-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> And they're still showing it. Is this a common thing? Am I the only one
>>> who
>>>> cares?
>>>> 
>>>> JL
>>>> 
>>>> On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 3:40 PM Jonathan Lighter <
>>> wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com <mailto:wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> A commercial for the Ring Video Doorbell features a presumably
>>>>> mockumentary lady ringing one to warn "Your guys's garage is on fire!"
>>>>> (The accompanying caption spells it "Your guys'," but the
>>> pronunciation
>>>> is
>>>>> "Your guys's.")
>>>>> 
>>>>> This sounds very weird to me.
>>>>> 
>>>>> JL


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