# For Fuck's Sake, "It's" means It Is, "Its" means "belonging to it"! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 14, 2007, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-fucks-sake-its-means-it-is-its-means-belonging-to-it/395823 "2007-03-14T00:19:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![flight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbce88/32.png) [@flight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flight)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2007, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-fucks-sake-its-means-it-is-its-means-belonging-to-it/395823/101 "2007-03-15T22:00:23Z")
[QUOTE=lissener] Um, yes, I do. But when the book came out I read a review–New Yorker maybe?–that outlined many, many errors in the book. The one I remember most is that she made up her own rules for semicolon usage. I don’t remember any other specifics, but the list was substantial. [Here’s](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001096.html) what I could find. [/QUOTE] After I read your initial post I did some searching of my own and the only real criticisms that I found (other that she is an overly critical proscriptive curmudgeon) were references to that same New Yorker article. I was not able to find a copy of the article itself, but references to it seem to excuse most of the criticisms as originating from the differences between American and British use of punctuation, particularly the semicolon. Apparently we went through a bit of a reformation and standardization that never took root across the pond. The one criticism that seems to be mentioned any time someone refers to the New Yorker article is the lack of an Oxford comma in the title of the book. Serial commas are not even standard for everyone in the states, and are apparently much less common in England, yet it is always described as a punctuation error. I think this is as case of one punctuation Nazi fighting with another over who can be the most anal, but if there is some other problem with the book please let me know. ---
**Author:** ![Ignatz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3be4f8/32.png) [@Ignatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignatz)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2007, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-fucks-sake-its-means-it-is-its-means-belonging-to-it/395823/102 "2007-03-16T00:30:31Z")
[QUOTE=Equipoise] Why is it when people start rational threads like this, half or more of the replies respond with doofus spellings or other punctuation or grammatical mistakes? I use the contraction rule myself. If it sounds stupid if you put “it is” in the sentence, then it’s the wrong its. [/QUOTE] I seen no mistakes. ---
**Author:** ![Ignatz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3be4f8/32.png) [@Ignatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignatz)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2007, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-fucks-sake-its-means-it-is-its-means-belonging-to-it/395823/103 "2007-03-16T00:32:18Z")
[QUOTE=Seven] These threads should be lumped with the _outrage 'o the day_ threads. Someone misspelled something, someone put a puppy in a oven, won’t someone think of the children. Blah-blah. What next? A or an? There or they’re? I or me? [/QUOTE] Him and me agree. ---
**Author:** ![Shecky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85e7bf/32.png) [@Shecky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shecky)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2007, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-fucks-sake-its-means-it-is-its-means-belonging-to-it/395823/104 "2007-03-16T10:31:03Z")
\ Y-O-U-apostrophe-R-E is You Are. Y-O-U-R is your. \ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/for-fucks-sake-its-means-it-is-its-means-belonging-to-it/395823.md?page=5)