More Apostrophe Abuse: It's vs. Its
"Its" only been about six "week's" since my last rant about apostrophe abuse, but they just keep appearing in the CD comments, at the rate of about one per week. Here are the latest "violation's" that deserve a public "punctuation citation":
1. “… their argument needs some crutches to stand on it's own."
2. “... a free-trade advocate treads very close to trade sanctions against China for it's currency manipulation."
3. "The Netherlands isn't egalitarian because of it's government, it's egalitarian because of it's culture." (two "abuse's" in one sentence!)
4. “…..a company that devotes some of it's revenues to R&D..."
5. "....increase the company’s market share while reducing it's share of products…."
Here's the simple, very basic grammar rule for it's vs. its.
14 Comments:
Its no big deal. Happy New Year.
Hopefully, nobody who misuses their apostrophes like your examples do will bother you or I alot in the New Year.
And that's the way it's.
No doubt there is apostrophe abuse out and about but I need to ask, is it worse than SIRI abuse?
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The iPad automatically "corrects" the three-letter offender to "it's."
One has to manually go back and change that if one want "its."
(I assume this is true for all versions of iPads; I'm working off the iPad 1.)
Great blog. Thank you for all you do.
1. Great blog, thanks
2. I used to be annoyed by that, not any more. It doesn't really matter.
3. think of it this way: many conventions are result of consistently applied mistakes. That is, one day maybe the two it(')s may merge and we will need to derive the meaning from context (which works good enough for me).
You should look at history of some older languages, such as Chinese. Many characters or ideograms that are now correct are in fact plain wrong and it is well know when exactly the wrong way of writing them "took over". Let the market decide :-)
This is one of the best blogs I’ve ever read. You’ve got some mad skill here, man. I just hope that you don’t lose your style because you’re definitely one of the coolest bloggers out there. Please keep it up because the internet needs someone like you spreading the word.A year ago, Wall Street was giddy and called for a strong up year for stocks. I was also in that camp, but thought technology and small-cap stocks would be the market drivers. More about Stock Market Price
Mark I could agree with you more and disagree with those commenters who say it's no big deal. It IS a big deal and a sign of a deterioration of polite society and rhetoric.
As bad as it is however, my pet peeve is using the incorrect personal pronoun in the object of a preposition, as in Alan's comment above:
'Hopefully, nobody who misuses their apostrophes like your examples do will bother you or I alot in the New Year.'
Now that bothers ME a lot no matter whether it bothers you a little or a lot. It's become the biggest grammatical faux pas in common use today. The English language should weep its misuse in this way.
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'Tis true, 'tis true 'tis pity, And pity 'tis 'tis true.
"Its" is kind of an exception right? People get used to using the apostrophe to show possession, so it's not an entirely stupid mistake.
The proliferation of text messaging slang is much more of a problem that it's and its for me. At least I know what someone means when he or she uses it's in place of its. Being able to transfer a message to another person that both understand is the main purpose of communication anywhow.
Walt, WTF, it's NBD, I mean, WWTDD? WWJCD? And WIBARGT if you knew the answer? Would the PotUS or the SCotUS be better off in some fashion?
TT4N & XOXOXOX,
OBH.
:^D
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