It’s been a long time since someone’s tried to convince me of that.
I gave up trying to point that out in post after post after the mod’s (sic) starting doing it.
Like it says in the heading, “It’s taking longer than we thought.” It’s too late. I’m like, the end is, like, basically, near, y’know?.
Meh. They’re called Greengrocers’ apostrophes.
Has been is just the present perfect tense of is.
It’s like totally taking for ever. Literally.
Correct - sorry for any confusion, Shakes. “It’s” is the exception though, not the rule. But here’s the thing - you know there are two words “its” and “it’s”. And you know that “its” doesn’t mean “it is” (or “it has”), because there is no apostrophe to take the place of those missing letters. So “it is” can only be “it’s”, making “its” the possessive.
Its isn’t an exception. The use of an eclitic s to form a possessive is only used with nouns that are not normally possessive. Its follows the same pattern as other possessive pronouns like yours, ours, his, hers, whose, theirs, and mines.
Okay, that last one might not be standard.
No, that’s not why. It also works with “It’s left me with a sense of unease” or “It’s run off,” or any other present perfect verb, not just “be.”
It’s means “it is” or “it has.”
Right. And “has” is just the present perfect tense of “to be”. “It’s” can also be “it was”. There is no other veb that this works with. “It’s” will always be it + to be. What “other present perfect verb, not just be” are you thinking of?
It isn’t. It’s a particle that helps construct the present perfect tense. And, in fact, it is based on the verb “to have,” not “to be.”
“Has been” is the present perfect tense of “to be,” but there are other possibilities.
Where’s Charlie? He’s gone to Africa. He has gone. There’s no “to be” in there.
I have good news! Brittney’s won the gold medal. Brittney has won. There’s no “to be” in there.
Which is why, according to many writing standards, you **do **use an apostrophe when forming the plural of a single, lowercase letter. Consider The Gregg Reference Manual (9th ed., paragraphs 622-623), which is what I use at work:
Examples include three Rs, HMOs, BBSs, M.D.s, *two U’s *(to avoid confusion with the word us), p’s and q’s, and wearing pj’s.
Moreover, in some regions, the contraction is simply the use of the principle verb have: He’s a lot of money, hasn’t he?
All the same, it shouldn’t be a surprise that people confuse the orthography/notation of possessives with plurals. The use of an apostrophe indicates an inflection that used to be written exactly as many plurals still are written.
In a way, the problem is that we can’t just use the apostrophe for plurals as we use it for possessives. We could write “There were bunch’s of carrots on the table” and no one would be worse for wear.
I’d prefer to get rid of existing apostrophes rather than authorizing more of them
My point is that the whole purpose of apostrophes in the beginning was to reflect the phonology of the language–not the grammar. But the script police applied it only half-way. Now people like the OP are upset because they expect apostrophes to have a purely grammatical end.
I’m the OP and that’s nothing like what my expectations are. In fact I think it was a big mistake to make the apostrophe a marker of possession. The other Germanic languages don’t do it. It souls have been better to keep it solely god indicating missing letters, but that decision was made long ago.
And when you say “reflect the phonology,” I think it’s a bit disingenuous to treat “indicating spaces where there used to be intervening phonemes” and “whenever there’s an S” as being equivalent.
It only marks possession per se in as much as the genitive morphology of English became elided.
No, they’re not equivalent. But its application for other elisions (he’s, she’s, etc.)–and more importantly–situations where sibilant possessives are necessary for clarity in speech and require some kind of demarcation in print (The Jones’ cat, i.e, “The cat of the Jones family”) show that it’s about notating phonology in general.
The style guides of renown which say it’s better to write “Jones’” than to write “Jones’s”–even though most people will pronounce it the same–are probably what lead to people violating the very rules they promote–the distinction isn’t phonetic.
And that’s the reason why it’s wrong for a person to write “address’” but correct for a person to write “Jones’”.
What acsenray said. “Has” is not the present perfect of “to be”; it’s the third person singular present of “to have.”
The third person singular present perfect of “to be” is “has been,” just as the 3p.s.p.p. of “to run” is “has run” or of “to eat” is “has eaten,” and likewise for any other verb.
And you can use “it’s” for any of them: “it has run off” = “it’s run off,” “it has eaten its dinner” = “it’s eaten its dinner;” “it has crashed” = “it’s crashed,” etc. “It’s” is a contraction for “it is” or “it has.”
“It’s” certainly is not a contraction of “it was,” though. You cannot say *“it’s here last night.”
Not to mention that the perfect is not a tense but an aspect. Especially in English.
True, but I prefer the following:
When is it its? When it isn’t it is.
When is it it’s? When it is it is.
It’s in the place of “it has” or John’s in the place of “John has” may be common usuage, but it’s lazy English and technically improper (particularly the latter use).