Pop Quiz Answers

1. There's several reasons you'd of been wiser to tour in the fall.

• "There's" should be "There are" because the word "reasons" is plural. In general, just avoid the false start of "There's" or "There are." (In this case you could begin "For several reasons....")
    
• Change "you'd of been" to "you'd have been."
    
• Making "fall" lower case is correct. Seasons aren't capitalized unless they're part of a formal name or title (Fall Conference).

2. We fly to Atlanta, Georgia next Sunday and plan to stay in the South for two weeks.

• You need a comma after "Georgia." Whenever you write a city and state, you need punctuation marks before and after the state.
     
• Capitalizing "South" is correct because it is a place — like Sarasota or the West Coast. When it is a direction ("Travel south one mile and turn left at Main Street"), lower case is correct.

3. I worked for the Smiths for a long period of time; it was a very unique experience.

• "Smiths" is correct without an apostrophe. The impulse to write "Smith's" doesn't make sense because it's simply plural, not possessive. ("Pat Smith's car" would be correct.) Pluralize names the same way you pluralize ordinary words.
   
• "Period of time" is a common redundancy. Use "period" or "time" — one or the other.
    
• The semicolon is fine when you have two relatively short sentences that are closely related. You're also correct to write it as two distinct sentences.
    
• Because "unique" means "one-of-a-kind," modifying it with "very" doesn't make sense. Delete "very."

4. My sister-in-laws jogged everyday of the vacation.

• The right way to make "sister-in-law" plural is "sisters-in-law." (The same rule applies to "holes-in-one" or "attorneys general.")
    
• Watch out for "everyday." It is one word as an adjective ("everyday occurrence"), but here it's an adverb so it should be two words ("every day").

5. I started my job in August, 1978 and on August 15, 2000, handed my resignation in.

• "August 1978" gets no comma because it's just a month and year.
    
• "August 15, 2000," is correct. You need a comma before and after the year because you're writing the exact date.
    
• Ending the sentence with "in" is okay (you are allowed to end a sentence with a preposition). In this case, however, you can rearrange the words and avoid the weak ending without making the phrasing awkward ("handed in my resignation").