I’ve always been taught you use it’s for the contraction of it is and its for a posessive. I can understand that perfectly, put as little confusion as possible in it, but what I’ve always wondered is why don’t we use its’, the general rule seems to be “if a word you’re trying to make posessive ends with an ‘s’ use a single apostrophe and no extra letters.” For example “The stegosaurus’ bone structure…” would be used to describe that you were making a reference to the bone structure in posession of a stegosaurus “The stegosaurus bone structure,” however would be more apt to describe an exhibit in a museum that happens to be a stegosaurus bone structure.
Why don’t we use the same rule for “its”? It seems to just be a word ending in “s” that you could easily tack an apostraphe on.
If “its” were the pronoun, rather than the possessive, that would make sense. As it is, you don’t tack an apostrophe on for the same reason “his” and “hers” don’t get them. “Its” is the possessive of “it”. No need to make it double-possessive.
I recently consulted my past two English professors about your last sentence. They both said that words like “Burns’s and Burns’” are both grammatically correct, it is just a matter of preference on whether or not you leave out the extra “s”.
“Its” and “hers” and “his” and “mine” and “yours” and “their” all fit the pattern of posessive pronouns being words unto themselves without apostrophes that might represent missing letters.
“Don’t” and “can’t” and “hasn’t” and “wouldn’t” all fit the pattern of a phrase contracted into what looks like a single word, including an apostrophe to mark the position of a missing letter. An even fancier contraction - “Rock ‘n’ Roll” where the “‘n’” stands for “and”, so there are apostrophes at both ends.
What I’m curious about is why “of Fred” would be replaced by “Fred’s”. It does not look like an apostrophe standing for a missing letter, but I don’t know what it does look like.
In all seriousness, I believe that the common confusion about “its/it’s” is caused specifically by the fact that “her” and “your” are legitimate words unto themselves, just like “it” is. And I do occasionally see people write “her’s” for this reason.
I was among those who got this wrong all the time, until someone told me to focus on the absence of “hi’s”. The lack of an apostrophe in “his” – and the lack of even an “s” in “mine” – is what got me to remember how this works.
When the possessive form of* it* appeared at the end of the 16th century ( the original genitive or possessive neuter was HIS, as in the masc., which continued in literary use till the 17th c) the usual form was** it’s**.
My understanding is that it was originally “Freds” but some people constructed a false etymology that the possessive s was a contraction of his, so that “Fred’s dog” was a contraction of “Fred his dog.” So they started writing the possessive s with an apostrophe to indicate contraction.
You think that’s funny, but I constantly get emails at work that include such abominations as “your’s” and “their’s” (I feel queasy just typing them), not to mention seeing it more and more outside of email in the “real world.” Not to mention seeing the apostrophe-s in plurals that have no relation whatsoever to possessives: “make’s” is one staring at me from an email subject header right now.
Ultimately, because it predates the “of Fred” construction.
It’s from the Old English genitive case, which acted as possessive:
Boat
Nominative: bat
Accusative: bat Genitive: bates
Dative: bate
It’s not obvious under modern spelling, but “bates” would have been pronounced “baht-es” – two syllables, with the “e” pronounced (actually, I’m not doing justice to the actual pronunciation here). For a variety of reasons, the “-es” was slurred and the apostrophe used to indicate the “e” was missing.
So, ultimately, it does indicate a missing letter.
(This is an oversimplification, of course – there were other genitive endings, but the -es predominated).
Yes, this is a matter of style. Some stylebooks go for the apostrophe-ess, others just want the plain apostrophe. I prefer to add both the apostrophe and the ess for consistency.
For singular words ending in s, I’ve always gone by pronounciation. If you would add an extra syllable when saying it out loud, go with apostrophe-s, otherwise just apostrophe. This too sometimes is an iffy preference judgment, but it certainly makes it clearer in your own mind that you’ve made the right call when you pronounce it the other way it it sounds totally wrong.
