Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Robinson
As the apostrophe is used to replace the missing part of a word, y'all is the correct contraction of 'you all' replacing 'ou'. Ya'll is incorrect because that would imply a contraction of 'ya all' as someone else suggested, but 'ya' isn't a real word and is itself a slag form of 'you'. So whichever way you cut it, you're looking for a contraction of 'you all' and so to be grammatically correct, it has to be y'all. It also sounds right when spoken as 'yawl', rather than 'yaal' but that might depend where you're from. Also, accepted use of language versus correct use of language are two different things in dialogue. If you want to make dialogue sound phonetically real for a particular character and when spoken in that area it sounds like yaal then in dialogue you might want to write ya'all, but if the sound is yawl then use y'all.
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Why would you wish to say "you all" in the first place? What advantage does it possess over a simple "you"?