That’s okay, Amp- we Strong Badians* have to stay together.
*[sub]Used to represent “fans of Strong Bad,” not “citizens of Strong Badia.” As we all know, Strong Badia’s population is tire.[/sub]
There was another thread about apostrophes recently. It seems that some jokers in England took issue with one of Bob’s points. They thought that it was acceptable to make plurals of things like VCR’s with the apostrophe. Bob has come out in favor recently of just dropping the whole thing.
Rickjay, thats a very good point you raze.
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.
'cause I’m pretty fucking good at typos asnd stuff. 
Because there’s not much to argue about. After the first few people say, I agree, the rest either make jokes or the thread is about done.
Are you saying that someone might come in and give a real argument that the rules of grammar and punctuation shouldn’t apply here? :dubious:
It’s got to be more complicated than that. Doesn’t it?
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?
Does it really matter? no
Is it understandable? yes
Or are you just being anal? yes
At least dopers generally know the difference between your/you’re, they’re/their/there, to/too/two. That’s more than you can say for almost any other message board. Or any chatroom. Or many small-business websites. Or an email from most corporate executives.
First get basic spelling down. Then sort out the homophones. “Could of” and “all intensive purposes”, in addition to the ones listed above, are particularly egregious offenders. Then learn where to place a comma, and more importantly, where not to place a comma. When the average Joe gets done with all this, I’ll make time in my schedule to complain about it’s.
Aren’t they both contractions?
The apostrophe-s in “Peter’s jacket” indicates a contraction of “Peter his jacket”.
So the possessive “its” is the shortened form of “it his” and the lack of apostrophe is pretty arbitrary.
So fuck yew awl.
Here, I’m going to throw this out because it’s been bugging me for years, and it bugged me again last night:
You know CoinStar machines? Where you go to redeem all your silver at the supermarket? If you put too many coins in too quickly, the screen flashes a message: “MY YOU’VE GOT A LOT OF COINS …”
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! Put a fucking comma in there, damn yer eyes! After how many revisions of the software, no-one has caught that?!?
Hm. Getting that off my chest doesn’t seem to have worked. I’m gonna bitch about this error to my dying day.
Excellent! And grammatically appropriate. 
They’re must be an hundred things that bother you and I.
Here’s how I remember it:
When is it “it’s”? When it is “it is”.
When is it “its”? When it isn’t “it is”.
What about when it’s Cousin It from the Addams Family? What then?
[sub]OK, OK - I know, it’s Cousin Itt[/sub]
Your not helping.
As_you_wish, I would expect someone who can’t even spell his (her?) own username right, to respond like this.
U R going str8 2 hell!
This thread has really peaked my interest in the apostrophe.
[Hi, Jack]
Am I the only one that finds this funny? I get this image in my mind of someone dumping a bucket of coins in this thing and it printing on the screen, “My you’ve got a lot of coins … shiny, pretty coins.”
Or, in keeping with the grammatical butchery, without the comma. And maybe spelled with “coin’s.”
[/Bye, Jack]
That said, I come across its/it’s misuse every damn day, along with other, similar random machine-gunning of apostrophes where they have no business being. Sure, it’s a bit of a confusing topic sometimes because there are a number of rules that need to be remembered:
- Plurals ending in a vowel: Add an “s” without an apostrophe. (“Bees,” “Houses,” “Areas.”)
- Possessives: Add an “s” with an apostrophe. (“The Jeep’s,” “The cat’s,” “My brother’s.”)
- Plurals ending in a consonant, add an “s.” (“Donuts,” “Cars,” “Beers.”)
- Except when the word ends in “s” or “sh,” in which case you have to add “es.” (“Dresses,” “Asses,” “Dishes,” “Ashes.”)
- And except when the word ends in “y,” where pluralization requires that you remove the “y” and add “ies.” (“Baby/Babies,” “Twenty/Twenties,” “Pantry/Pantries.”)
- But possessive “y” words still get the apostrophe-“s” treatment.
- Plural possessive nouns: Add an “s” with the apostrophe at the end. (“The dogs’ toys,” “My brothers’ car.”)
- Possessive pronouns: Add an “s” without an apostrophe. (“His,” “Hers,” "Theirs, “Its.”)
- Also remember that none of these pluralization rules apply when a word is both singular and plural. (“Sheep,” “Fish,” “Rush Limbaugh.”) The possessives still apply, however. (“The sheep’s,” “The fish’s,” “Rush Limbaugh’s.”)
- Contractions involving (pro)nouns ("[(pro)noun] is…") must be determined by their context. For example:
- “My brother’s car’s in the shop.” “Car” is the subject, and it belongs to "My brother.’ Thus, the possessive portion of this sentence is “brother’s car.” The car itself is in the shop, so the contracted portion of this sentence is “car’s in” – the car is in the shop.
- “My brother has a car. It’s in the shop.” Only one item here: “It’s.” “It” is the subject of the second sentence. In context, it is obvious that “it” is the car, and that “it is” in the shop.
- “My brother’s car’s in the shop. Its rear bumper fell off.” The first sentence has been covered. In the second sentence, “it” is obviously referring to the car in the first sentence. The subject of the second sentence is “rear bumper,” which belongs to “it,” therefore “its” is possessive.
Did I forget anything? Make any mistakes? Probably. But it illustrates the point that it’s understandable how some people can get them confused. It shouldn’t happen, but it does. And yes, it bugs my inner grammar nazi.
Next week, we’ll cover your schwas and dipthongs.