How do we know “its” is inherently possessive, but “one’s” is not? It still boils down to learning by rote what the exceptions are. I mean, I rarely screw up “its” and “it’s” and when I do, it’s just carelessness, but it’s a completely natural error, since it goes against every instinct in me to just put the normal apostrophe-s possessive ending on it.
Basically, the rule is: nouns take an apostrophe-s to form the possessive in English*
except if it’s the possessive of a pronoun, in which case it doesn’t.
except if that pronoun is “one,” in which case it does.
*and except if your style guide has exceptions for names ending in ess, ess-ending nouns in certain situations, words ending in ess sounds but not literally ending in an ess, etc.
This makes little sense. By your simple rule, since there is nothing “inherently possessive” about the word it, the possessive form should presumably be *it’s.
In any event, most of the words that you have listed are not possessive determiners like its, they are possessive pronouns. The possessive determiners are:
me > my
you > your
he > his
she > her
we > our
they > their
it > its
one > one’s
The first 6 pronouns are completely irregular, in forming the possessive they do not follow the simple “add an s” rule that is used to make a noun possessive, so the question of the presence of an apostrophe is not applicable. It and one do form the possessive by adding an s. It appears to be the only word in the English language that makes a possessive form by adding an s but omitting the apostrophe.
That’s why I find these comments by wolfpup to be both ignorant and offensive:
In fact, the reason that many perfectly literate people make the its/it’s mistake rather frequently when not concentrating carefully is most likely because “its” is simply an arbitrary irregular possessive form that does not conform to any logical pattern found in other possessives.
Then what were those vehicles called? It certainly wasn’t “chariots” - the Romans used *those *for sports and ceremonies only, never for combat.
It might be complete nonsense if I had ever said any such thing. In fact, I said just the opposite. Here, let me bold it for you, maybe that will help:
You cannot argue and accept that as an evolving human language English is full of inconsistencies, idioms, and all manner of anomalies that have to be accepted and learned as the norm of standard English because they just are, but then simultaneously try to justify some conflicting usage completely outside that norm just because it satisfies some arbitrary formality that you just thought of.
Your interesting perspective on one of the primary drivers of language is duly noted.
By the way, since you seem unable to resist throwing out gratuitous insults about being “ignorant and offensive” which you’ve done two or three times now despite my request to kindly stop this unproductive unpleasantness, let me give you an example of what ignorant and offensive actually looks like, so you can tell the difference.
Ignorant and offensive would be when there is a lighthearted discussion about the kinds of things that people tend to be clueless about, and someone mentions the difference beween “it’s” and “its” (both a very common error and an almost comically trivial one), and then for no discernible reason some self-appointed pontificator descends like a flaming prophet of the Old Testament to inject a stream of insulting invectives into an otherwise cheerful discussion.
Wouldn’t those same instincts lead you to want to throw in an apostrophe when transforming certain possessive determiners (her, their, your, our) into their possessive pronoun forms? If we say “That’s not my car, it’s Frank’s” then why not “That’s not my car, it’s her’s”? After all, “hers” is not the plural of “her”, it’s a possessive pronoun.
No argument that these things are learned, not inferred. We don’t do this because there are only a handful of personal pronouns and every native English speaker learns their specific possessive forms at a very early age as part of their elementary vocabulary building.
You claimed exactly what I described, that the correct usage is not an irregular convention but that it can be deduced with “a moment’s thought”. You said it right here:
You now claim that you hold my view, that the usage is in fact an irregular one, an arbitrary convention that must simply be learned by rote and remembered. I’m pleased that you now agree with me, but note that in your earlier comment that you quoted just above you did not hold this view. In fact, you were clearly describing my view of the matter, not your own. Note the first word of your quote, with my bold:
And as for tone, if you don’t like commensurate pushback against your rants, perhaps you should go back and reread the kind of pompous and offensive tone that you habitually take when criticizing other people’s use of language when it does not conform to your misconceived ideals. Light-hearted it ain’t, and it wasn’t me who hijacked this thread to get on their hobby-horse of ill-humored peevery.
I found out just last week that Bohemia was an actual place and it’s located in the Czech Republic.
But it doesn’t have a coastline.
I used to believe that I was the only person who remembered when # meant “number”.
It’s still amazing to me how many people don’t know.
Good job misinterpreting pretty much everything, right from my original post.
Giving something “a moment’s thought” doesn’t presume that it can be logically deduced from some algorithm. Sometimes it means – as in this particular case – remembering the basics that most of us were taught in the early years of elementary school.
And whether you see it or not, my “it’s/its” post was intended to be lighthearted in the same spirit as the Dave Barry column I linked later, or this definition from The Guardian of an “apostrofly”: “an insect that lands at random on the printed page, depositing an apostrophe wherever it lands”. Yet somehow it inspired your snarky curmudgeonly “confirmation bias” response and it all went downhill from there. I suppose I could have added a smiley, but you don’t like those either, so one is at a loss.
I’m done with this. Apologies to all for my part in the digression.
Well, thank goodness that all your lightheartedness is over. Since you seem unwilling to reconsider the tone that you habitually adopt in your peeving diatribes, let me give you a few highlights:
As someone who has made this error rather frequently when writing quickly, I’m relieved to discover that I’m not necessarily a moron.
The grackles in Texas are not historically native species, they are Great-tailed Grackles, who have recently expanded their range from south of the Rio Grande. A very similar grackle, the Boat-tailed Grackle, occurs in Florida, and similarly, is a recent invader from the Caribbean. Both have characteristic long tails.
The native North American grackle is the Common Grackle, still called Purple Grackle by old-timers. Anywhere north of the Gulf Coast states, flocks of grackles are Common (purple) Grackles, and have relatively normal length tails. They are most conspicuous as noisy flocks of spring migrants. Even in Texas, where they are easily overlooked among the much more numerous Great-tailed Grackles, and less urban in their habitat preference.
Based upon the universe of people in my household, I’m the only one that actually knows how the thermostat works, even though I’ve explained it too my wife about 50 times, she just ignores me.
‘Joisteses’
‘JOISTESES’
It’s always the company owner, to boot.
When I was a kid this was earnestly explained to me and I wondered why the air molecules needed to rejoin after passing over/under an airfoil; were they having an interrupted conversation? Unfortunately being a kid, I bowed to authority and kept my mouth shut. Finding out that the F-104 (I think it was) has a wing with equal distances top and bottom was the final nail in that coffin.
I was never very satisfied with the traditional explanation of lift based on equal transit time, but always assumed it was just one of those scientific things, of which there are many, that textbooks explain but I can’t get my head around. (Stuff like how transistors work fits in this category)
But I never imagined that those textbooks were wrong. And one has a desire to smirk and say, “silly scientists…of course that theory was wrong, it’s so obvious”
Then I tried to get a straight answer as to how lift works, and realized that the problem is that it is a complex interaction that defies simplification and understanding by the layman, similarly to how quantum mechanics can’t be understood at a gut level but the math works out. There isn’t a simple intuitive explanation available.
Here are the gory details from Wikipedia.
Here is an MIT student’s award-winning report on the topic.
Neither source is very satisfying, and the both give a hint as to why we were told the wrong thing for so long: it’s complicated stuff.
Leap years.
I was talking to a co-worker today, and the conversation turned to leap years. He knew they were there, but had no idea why. He’s not stupid, just had never heard an explanation. I told him the calendar was 365 days, but the year is really 365 and a quarter, so we put in the extra day every four years. He caught on instantly: “Oh, and the four quarters make the extra day! And it lines up again!”
I don’t know how he missed this way back in primary school. In any case, I spared him the 100/400 rules.
In the Southern Hemisphere 1 March is first day of Autumn. So that makes sense.
Each season goes for 3 months, so you can work out the rest.
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Waking this thread up for a few minutes…
I have been working on putting my basement machine shop together, and the machines arrived on Tuesday.
My nephew sent a photo of the metal cutting lathe to his friend. This morning he came up to me and said “I don’t know how to answer his question, maybe you can help?”
I looked at his phone:
“what is it?”
“a lathe”
“what does it do?”
They are both in their mid 20s.
I don’t expect many people to recognize it as a screw cutting engine lathe or even that it is a metal cutting lathe (as opposed to a wood lathe), but to not know what a lathe does?
I knew what a lathe did when I was a kid, because my best friend’s father operated one. But I can easily see someone in his 20s (or older) not knowing what one was. It’s something that’s not relevant to a lot of people’s lives.