No, of course not. I should have put the word incorrectly in quotation marks. Sorry.
My point was that you seem to think that for some reason there’s something wrong in that those two words are pronounced differently—that somehow they have taken on pronunciations that they shouldn’t have—and that this happened only because “common usage has dictated what they should be.” Usage always determines how we pronounce just about all words. Cough and tough are not exceptional. Why should we pronounce them the same? Because of the spelling? Spelling doesn’t drive pronunciation. It follows it—or at least it tries to, and in this case it just doesn’t. People speak long before they write; speech is natural, while writing is contrived. I easily see your point about spelling, which is well-taken (and true), but it’s not really relevant if in the same breath you imply that writing is the source of speech.
Huh? No. I’m just referring to usage such as this:
[QUOTE=Nicholas Pileggi on Fresh Air, June 15, 2012]
He was being debriefed for all of these cases at the same time. These cases went to trial. He testified in these cases. In these cases, if he would have lied in any one of these cases, he would’ve committed perjury. The entire agreement with the United States government would be null and void.
[/quote]
Again, I mean “incorrect” in quotation marks–I have no problem with it personally. My point is that even a journalist like Pileggi will say this on NPR, but because it’s not one of those “rules” that are easy to digest, you don’t hear people getting all miffed about it and starting threads about it. (It’s becoming common in things like spoken interviews, but it probably isn’t anything he’d put into print–or that his editor would allow).
Threads like this must come up every six weeks, and it seems like it’s always about its/it’s or they’re/their/there or apostrophes. Can’t we get some variety here?
Well, uh, yeah…that’s exactly what I am saying. (The OP isn’t really about grammar, though. It’s about punctuation.) When I’m proofreading documents for colleagues at work, for example, I do care about these things. I just correct it, when appropriate, and move on. People have always made this kind of error in writing, and we have to expect it to happen. It’s natural for people to make these errors. When it matters (for professional presentation, etc.) people ask someone to take a look, and change it to what’s considered standard usage. It’s like taking your suit to the dry-cleaners before an interview. No one expects it to be wrinkle-free 24/7. I don’t stand on the corner and point out every guy walking by with a crease in his suit and decry the fall of decency.
Well, in that case, we hardly need the prescriptive rules at all. What purpose do they serve, if we only really care about common usage [which is indeed the sensible position to take]? If, whenever common usage and prescriptive rules are in conflict, common usage wins, then there’s never any need for argument. All the arguments arise only when commonly accepted usage is in conflict with the prescriptive rules.
As does written text. We could go ahead and forget all the “its”/“it’s” rules, and consider them both variant spellings for both words. Of course, we’ve been trained not to, and I accept that this is not how spelling has standardized. The aggravation is entirely induced by this training, though; had we let people spell them both the same way, or both either way they liked, we’d disambiguate from context just as in speech, and there’d be no confusion.
But I agree that “its” is the standard spelling for the one, and “it’s” for the other. It’s an unnecessary distinction, but it is one that we draw. I agree that mixing the two up is an error (you will find I am in agreement much more often with issues of alleged orthographical errors than with issues of alleged errors in grammar, usage, pronunciation, etc.). I just don’t think it matters very much. I don’t think there’s any point getting bent out of shape over it. My day isn’t ruined when someone makes a typo.
Well, it’s a spelling error involving a punctuation mark. I think it’s reasonable to call it either. But this is quibbling, as you say.
You’re gonna have a bunch of people complaining about your misspelling in a second.
I think English would benefit by dropping the apostrophe. As it is, the apostrophe cannot be trusted and we have to read around them. I dont believe theyre necessary and, in fact, I think theyre a hindrance.
Hard to type that way, Ill admit. My right pinkie gets bored.
More or less you are right. The thing is, every style manual has different 'rules" for the damned things, and thus the grammar-nazis get to look down their noses at us peons all the time, as no matter what- we are* wrong. This is why the little pedantic style nerds get their assholes so in a twinkle about apostrophes. Witness the many threads in GQ about the useless damned things.
(True you cant type 'were" instead of “we’re” but honestly ‘we are’ is the same amount of typing)
Just what did your high school English teacher do to you, anyway, that your smoldering hatred persists after all this time?
Actually, every English “style manual” has the same rules about the use of apostrophes, since those rules have been standardized for decades. if you think every style manual has different rules for apostrophes, you haven’t read very many style manuals, at least not very carefully, and that may be the source of your problem.
Well, considering that “wont” and “won’t” are different words, “cant” and can’t" are different words, “shed” and “she’d” are different words, and “ill” and “I’ll” are different words, it’s probably too late.
Apostrophes serve another function not yet mentioned, which is to denote proper meter in the lines of poems and plays. Caliban: “And my profit on’t is, I know how to curse.” Impossible to write it properly without the apostrophe.
Bear and bear are different words. Sow and sow are different words. Lead and lead are different words. Wind and wind are different words.
And, frankly, cant and wont would hardly cause problems for most Americans since they are not words the majority of people bother to use in the first place.
Specialized language use can muck about with apostrophes all they want. This thread wasn’t bitching about some typesetter’s misuse of an eliding apostrophe in Shakespeare.
Who in this thread has demonstrated any difficulty properly placing apostrophes? If the answer is “no one”, then some of us are making arguments not out of the sour grapes you imagine… (Though I don’t see why it would be problematic even if we were making arguments on the grounds of our own experience with finding the apostrophe system unwieldy)
