Look, I know this is an old complaint, but I’m starting to see this idiotic mistake by a lot of folks on the SDMB, many of whom should know better. And I don’t mean just once, but repeatedly, by the same posters over and over. Here, I’ll pick on one, because he made this error about two dozen times in six posts in one thread:
For the love of Christ, people.
“It’s” means “It is.” It’s a fucking contraction. “It’s going to be a sunny day.”
“Its” is a possessive pronoun. It means “belonging to it.” “The car lost its muffler today.”
From a second grader this is an understandable error. From an adult whose first language is English it’s inexcusable. Stop it, for fuck’s sake. Lots of posters like to babble about how SDMB regulars are smarter than your average bear. Given the rampant misuse of “it’s” and “its” here recently, I doubt it.
The problem is that in most cases possessives *do *require an apostrophe. “John’s” means “belonging to John”. “The cat’s” means “belonging to the cat”. So it’s not surprising that people think “it’s” should mean “belonging to it”.
I’m with you fully on bodily mutilating those who screw up its versus it’s.
I do have to point out, though, that just because one is fluent in English doesn’t mean one can write English that well. Writing is a learned skill while speech is all but innate.
Even so, someone who’s theoretically educated has no business not knowing its versus it’s. Hang 'em.
I think this rule has always been confusing since the apostrophe before the “s” usually indicates a possessive noun. For example, when you say “for fuck’s sake,” you mean the sake which belongs to “fuck”. However, if you use the pronoun “it” in place of “fuck,” then the apostrophe must be dropped. “For fuck, and all of its sake.”
Being as careful as I like to be about grammar, however, it is quite rare for me to make that mistake. Being aware of the fact that “it’s” is a contraction helps.
That being said, we are used to seeing “it is” turned into the contraction “it’s.” Therefore, when you see “it’s,” it doesn’t immediately registers as a wrong word in the way that “her’s” or “hi’s” would.
It’s happening to other possessive pronouns: our’s, their’s. I’ve also seen verbs get mutated: “Joe get’s the job done.” WTF? It’s like people are blindly attaching apostrophes to any S sound at the end of a word.
I was taught that if you automatically convert it’s to “it is” in your head and the sentence still makes sense, then you’ve got the right one:
It’s about time she learned to control her bowels.
becomes
It is about time she learned to control her bowels. (PASS)
She put the turtle on it’s shell
becomes
She puts the turtle on it is shell. (FAIL)
It the Apostrophe Virus, and it seems to be spreading. I see otherwise intelligent people sneaking apostrophes into words that don’t even have a possessive form.
The cat see’s the mouse.
I get the feeling that people are thinking, when in doubt sprinkle in some apostrophes.
And you can’t correct these people because they’re either (1) your superiors, or (2) the type who would reply “Oh so what/big deal, you obviously knew what I meant!”
Don’t feel bad. I know two people who are under the impression that any word ending in ‘s’ requires an apostrophe. If that wouldn’t make you want to kill something, you’re a stronger man than I know how to be.
Apparently the ‘ed’ which used to live at the end of words like ‘iced’ and ‘whipped’ and ‘mashed’ (which are turning into ‘ice’ as in ‘icetea’ and ‘whip’ as in ‘whip cream’ or, ye gods ‘whipcream’, and ‘mash’ as in ‘mash’ potatoes) has been shrunken and tossed, willy-nilly, behind random s’s. Pretty soon, all the ‘ed’ endings will be gone and you’ll s’ee apo’strophe’s every place there i’s an 's.
At which point you’ll see me smacking my head against a big, hard, rock because I read it the way I was taught and then realize somebody screwed up again.
