As I do every year, I watched the Academy Awards with a few friends. We meet at one friend’s house, enjoy a potluck dinner and gab about the dresses, the emcee(s), the Academy winners and losers. This year had its usual fill of beautiful and not so beautiful moments. We can learn many etiquette lessons by watching the Academy Awards.  Here are my notes on the good, the bad and the ugly moments of this year’s show.

Let’s start with the “Bad”

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I’ve been working with a client who is preparing for an important speech. One of the things we discussed is the protocol of introducing someone. Many speakers are unaware of proper speaking protocol, so I thought I’d share some tips.

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I have a problem. It’s something I’ve struggled with for a long time and until recently didn’t realize how serious the problem was. I’m working on changing, but it hasn’t been easy, especially since most people have the same problem. It’s a “you guys” problem. As in, “Have you guys seen the movie Avatar?” Those in the south use “y’all” instead of “you guys”. Either way, it’s improper English and needs to go away.

Why is it that we feel we need to add an extra word after “you” when we are talking about a group? “You” is both a singular and plural pronoun, so there is no need to add “guys” or “all” after the word. 

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