Dear Scoop: Q&A

Dear Readers,

Question #1: That ain’t good grammar. Is that sentence considered proper grammar?

Answer: Ain’t is not standard English; however, it’s perfectly acceptable to use ain’t in a few idiomatic expressions and when quoting a speaker who is using nonstandard English.

1. Idiomatic expressions:
• You ain’t seen nothing yet!* (Proper grammar is as follows: You haven‘t seen anything yet.)
• If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.* (Proper grammar is as follows: If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.)
• An idiom from Yogi Berra: “It ain’t over till it’s over!” (What Yogi meant was that the game isn’t over until the last out.)

2. Quoting a speaker.
Here are examples from the movie The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993):

Tom Sawyer: Muff’s innocent, Huck; we gotta help him.
Huck Finn: We ain’t gotta do nothing.
Tom Sawyer: You’d let him hang for something he didn’t do?
Huck Finn: It ain’t no skin off my back.
Tom Sawyer: I thought we was friends, Huck.
Huck Finn: You thought wrong. I ain’t got no friends. Ain’t got time for ‘em. But if I did have one, I’d want him to be like you. **

*Sabin, William A., The Gregg Reference Manual, Ninth Edition, McGraw Hill, New York, 2001, p.283.
**From IMDB.com

That isn’t good grammar: Bryan Garner also discusses ain’t on page 28 in his Dictionary of Modern American Usage (1998). There he explains, for example, that those who know and use standard English may use ain’t “to be tongue-in-cheek.” So if you were to say, “That ain’t good grammar,” you would be using ain’t in a tongue-in-cheek fashion.

Question #2: Our favorite memory. Is it proper grammar?

Answer: Yes. Our favorite memory is a noun phrase. You can use it, for example, as a title of a chapter or an essay or within a sentence.
Example: My family and I traveled to California last summer. Let me tell you about our favorite memory.
Example: This is our favorite _____ memory. (Fill in the blank with vacation or holiday, for example.)

Do you want to make memory plural? Here’s an example:
• What are our favorite camp memories? Oh, where shall I begin?

Thanks for asking your questions. I hope these answers have been helpful.

Best wishes,

Scoop