It’s time to consider its versus it’s (again)
[NOTE: Based on some comments in today’s open thread, I think it’s time to recycle this old post.]
It may be the most common error in English, and Spellcheck doesn’t catch it (although Spellcheck catches me when I attempt to spell Spellcheck “Spellcheck,” much preferring two words or a hyphenation to my single word).]
I try my best to pay attention to grammar and spelling, helped out by the always-handy Spellcheck (shh—don’t tell anyone, but I’m not the world’s best speller, unaided).
But Spellcheck has its limits. And one of them is the proper use of the word “its.” “Its,” that is, vs. “it’s.”
Have you ever noticed how often those two words are confused? Even though I try to pay close attention, I’m always catching myself messing up, and my bet is that, despite my best efforts, some of them have slipped by here. I see it all the time in the work of others, too (and no, I’m not going to do an exhaustive search and link to examples; you’ll just have to take my word for it. Or not.)
The error almost always goes in one direction only: the use of the apostrophe, as in “it’s,” for the possessive form of the word, when it should only be used for the contraction “it is.” Example (the one that sparked this rumination): originally, instead of “…see this from Reuters, not known for its right-wing bias” I had written “…see this from Reuters, not known for it’s right-wing bias.”
Why do we do this? Are we all just stupid! No, no, a thousand times no! We are actually very smart, because we are extrapolating a general rule to include this word, and that is the rule about forming possessives. Usually we do this by adding an apostrophe and an “s,” as you no doubt well know. But with the words “it’s” and “its,” we choose to reserve the apostrophe for the contraction, and that leaves the possessive hanging out there, alone and forlorn and apostropheless.
In this, however, we’re following another rule (are you still with me? or have I already bored you to tears?), that of the possessive personal pronoun: hers, his, theirs, ours, yours, for example. All lack apostrophes. But they’re not confusing, somehow—perhaps because, unlike “its,” they clearly refer to people, and are never given an apostrophe because they never become contractions.
Now, aren’t you glad I cleared that up? But I bet it won’t stop me from making the same mistake again—and again and again.
It’s not that difficult.
If you can replace ITS with “it is” then you need the apostrophe, which signals that the second “i” is dropped.
Otherwise, “its” is correct.
Mr Whatsit likes this rule: “It’s is not, it isn’t ain’t, and it’s it’s, not its, if you mean it is. If you don’t, it’s its. Then too, it’s hers. It isn’t her’s. It isn’t our’s either. It’s ours, and likewise yours and theirs.”
Its is the possessive.
It’s isn’t.
(Hint: One can always check any occurrence of “its” by asking “Whose?” Or “What’s?”)
And then there are the invariable typos of the well-intentioned….
Just repeat the sentence you’re writing by replacing “it’s” or “its” with “it is” and see if it makes sense. Ditto for “your” and “you’re”.
Yes, it’s easy to figure out when you stop and think. But if people are in a hurry, they often make the mistake without even realizing it. I see it constantly from people who actually know better.
But Spellcheck has its limits. And one of them is the proper use of the word “its.” “Its,” that is, vs. “it’s.”
I see that error time and again. While it is probably hyperbole to say it drives me up the wall, it is accurate to state that error does not please me. While one may fault Spellcheck for not catching it, I suspect that those who make the mistake are not making a typographical error, but believe that is the correct way to spell. I have little tolerance for those who make that mistake. Call me a grammar Nazi, if you want.
I liked the rules of thumb that Margaret, Mrs. Whatsit, Barry, and David contributed to avoid the mistake.More positive than my AARGH!
I think people add the apostrophe because they’re afraid they’ll be wrong if they don’t, and because they don’t know the difference.
Apostrophes run wild in many places. I’ve seen “banana’s” for sale at the grocery store.
I was actually thinking about this very subject just this morning….
Kate (4:06 pm) has “seen “banana’s” for sale at the grocery store.”
No foolin’. The use of an apostrophe to form a plural is one of those things that drives me up Gringo’s (3:58 pm) wall (as well as my own wall).
However, I don’t think it’s because “people add the apostrophe because they’re afraid they’ll be wrong if they don’t” [Kate again], but I do think it’s because “they don’t know the difference,” because in general, while apostrophes are not used to form plurals, many people neither know nor care. It’s what they think looks right.
The times they keep on a-changin’, and I’m havin’ trouble gettin’ with the program.
My pet peeve is the maddeningly common misspelling of “lose” as “loose”, “losing” as “loosing” and even “loser” as “looser”. Invariably the rest of the text has fine spelling and grammar, and it’s committed by intelligent people who really should know better.
According to the language learning model I follow (Stephen Krashen), if you have to remember a rule, you haven’t acquired that part of the language yet. And there is a natural order to how we learn each langauge.
Many people who speak English as a second language quite well will still say “He go.” After all, I go, you go, we go, they go. Except … he goes. They haven’t acquired “he goes” yet. According to Krashen that’s one of the last pieces to fall into place for English learners.
Additionally, its vs it’s is only a problem for written English and most of our experience with English is with hearing, speaking, and reading — not writing.
I’m 72. Its something I’ve got down. 🙂
I do regularly commit some grammatical and spelling errors, but for some reason it’s not a common error for me to stumble over “its.”
Spellcheck can tell whether or something is an actual word. It doesn’t understand context, therefore it can’t tell whether or not it’s the correct word. “Canon” isn’t “cannon”, “Rouge” isn’t “Rogue”, and “Defiantly” isn’t “Definitely”, but spellcheck will allow all of these mistakes to slip through.
I really don’t have to think about its or it’s when I write. In my head I am saying it is while writing it’s. Not that I don’t have other problems when writing.
On things that drive me crazy when reading is the confusion people have using there, their and they’re. AARRGH!
I am more forgiving of blog comments than I am of errors in published media articles.
I don’t worry about its/it’s when I’m writing either. I only have to remember the rule when I see improper usage and my brain goes beep.
The new AI spellcheckers will catch this error and many others. Chat tells me so.
____________________________
Yes, most AI spellcheckers and grammar checkers are designed to flag incorrect usage of “its” and “it’s.” They use natural language processing algorithms to analyze the context of the sentence and determine whether the possessive pronoun or the contraction is appropriate. However, no spellchecker is perfect, and there may be some complex cases where it might not catch the error.
____________________________
Chat is spooky good at this stuff.
I predict we will be seeing less of these errors, at least in formal writing, as people start running their text through AI.
Proofreading is another job category on the chopping block.
Seriously, we are looking at a jobapocalypse starting this year.
Neo has done a fine job here. Her commenters likewise.
I just want to record my undying enmity toward SpellWreck.
That is all.
Question – did anyone else learn the rule that, when creating a suffix, one should double the final consonant or it will make the previous vowel long? Examples – “bussed” means to transport by bus, short “u”. It isn’t “bused” “Fused”, no double s, has a long U. “”Shovelled”, by this rule, is correct, otherwise we would have to make the E long. “ShovEEled? No. I’ve been following this rule forever, but spellcheck corrects me, foolish machine!
Another issues – I regard the past tense of “shine” to be “shone”. But various media and even books now use “shined”. This is a hill I’m willing to die on!
My wordprocesser (OO) allows me to modify the standard replacement dictionary. A little more than a dictionary as it also contains phrases, contractions, etc.
I alter problematic words. I removed bowel(s) because I can live with the squiggle red underline.
It and it’s are a more complicated problem for me as I have a second god, Ounast, who is sexless and commonly referred to as It. I reread the sentences two or three times with It. All in all I use “it’s” more frequently in the text so I removed “its” for flagging. The squigglies don’t print so, all good.
Overall I can live with Spellcheck but I loath the grammar checker and turned it off completely.
Homophones are always an issue.
I once knew an Italian speaker online who was glad the first time he mixed them up because he knew it meant he was thinking in English.
Before Strunk & White, there was Mr Schneider, my senior English teacher. The whole program in his mind was that none of his students would have to take bonehead English at Cal if they should apply there. Said he: “it” is a pronoun, and the possessive form was “its”. “It’s” was a conjunction of “it is”.
He also was highly critical of “comma error”, or “shotgun” comma placement.
I’m 79, and his teaching is still with me 62 years later. He has gained limited immortality.
Your right.
As others have already said, it is the one good piece of advice my administrative law professor gave us: do not use it’s. Spell it out as it is, and its is possessive.
The guy was an otherwise jerk, serving as some federal agency’s lawyer (amongst many others) in DC. No wonder the Deep Swamp is as swampy as it is.
Surellin, allow me to join you there!
I wonder if ‘shone’ is correct for the intransitive verb form only (the sun shone all day), but if one shines a light on something, or has done so, then one shined a light on or at X (since ‘light’ is direct object there, we have a transitive past tense). That’s the kind of transitive/intransitive distinction that I love. I believe German employs it as well with some of the irregular verbs, though I can’t seem to come up with any specific examples at the moment.
That bit about the double consonant is a good thing to remember.
I love ‘shone’ as an intransitive verb!
The moon shone.
Oooo….
The moon shined.
I’m sorry. I need to see your high school diploma.
It’s an apostrophe!
Its apostrophe is missing….
huxley:
Did you run this by AI: “I predict we will be seeing less of these errors …” ?
huxley, Philip+Sells, Surellin, you are singing my song. The word “shone” is beautiful. The word “shined” is just . . . not.
But huxley, I’m not so sure that AI will improve grammar and punctuation errors. Doesn’t that depend on whether the human beings who teach the AI understand the rules? These days, most humans don’t, especially the younger ones who are likely to be creating AI. (Yes, I’m crotchety, and get off my lawn.) And if the AI is teaching itself by reading everything it can find, so much of what it’s reading will be wrong, and how will it know?
Errors involving conjugation of the verbs lie and lay are the worst, I say. People lie down. Chickens lay eggs. People do not ever lay down, any more than chickens lie eggs. Intransitive, transitive. I do grant that the verbs get a little more confusing in the past tense, but only a little. Sister Michael Annetta understood the differences perfectly when I was in the fourth grade a long time ago, and gave no quarter to any fourth grader who couldn’t get them straight by June. But I’m shouting from a lonely ice floe on this one; nobody cares about lie and lay any more. The language is changing before our eyes and the distinction is passing out of it. Language does do that, I suppose. Otherwise, we’d all be speaking Old English or Sanskrit or Aramaic.
One more thing: this conversation, and particularly the comments on extraneous apostrophes, reminded me that there once was a very wonderful blog with a great title: The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks. You can deduce the subject matter. Some years ago, it used to cause great hilarity in the grammar-nerd Whatsit family. Feeling nostalgic, I checked, and guess what?
It’s still there, though it hasn’t been updated in a while. Worth checking out, for those who have fun with such things!
Did you run this by AI: “I predict we will be seeing less of these errors …” ?
neo:
Obviously not. Ho, ho. 🙂
I run my terrible French by Chat all the time. It’s excruciating. But right. I assume that if anyone runs their rough draft English by Chat, they will find the same. And benefit.
Therefore, fewer errors. QED.
But huxley, I’m not so sure that AI will improve grammar and punctuation errors. Doesn’t that depend on whether the human beings who teach the AI understand the rules?
Mrs+Whatsit:
What you are saying makes sense by the old AI approach.
* Consult experts.
* Extract the rules.
* Write code enforcing the rules.
–Boom. Expert system.
It’s a great theory but reality just can’t be sliced and diced that nicely and it’s always changing.
What the new AI does is just dump gigatons of data into a mechanism with billions of knobs, which weights everything and feeds data back correspondingly into an earlier stage of the circuit. Sort of. I don’t understand it that well myself.
The point is that it’s not a bunch of if-A-then-B-else-C things. It’s very hard to know what’s going on underneath the hood of an AI and that’s a big problem.
They’ve trained Chat not to say stupid, dangerous things, but they haven’t stopped Chat from thinking those things.
fullmoon
Its 🙂 the threadwinner.
I don’t want to loose my scents of humor. Otherwise I would stink up the joint.
It’s a puzzlement!
Gringo, and JFM: AARGH!’s good. AARRRGGGGHHHHH!!! is better.
I’ve never ever had this issue — if I do it (it does happen, though rarely) my proofer’s eye spots it instantly and tells me to correct it. I’m not going to claim I have never made an error, but it’s pretty damned rare. My proofer’s eye is sufficiently good that I could probably make a living at it, if it paid worth a damn.
My brain is pretty well organized… I know my first drafts are generally better than most peoples’ second drafts.
@ fullmoon > “Your right.”
https://www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-06-at-1.50.25%E2%80%AFPM.png
@ huxley > “After all, I go, you [s.] go, we go, [you [p.] go], they go. Except … he goes.”
(Just filling out the conjugation chart.)
But why? Inquiring minds want to know!
The best I could do was a random stroll through the internet, connecting a few entries in a rather random way (simulating a Chat, but probably not as comprehensive or well-written).
https://www.etymonline.com/word/go#etymonline_v_9002
“Old English gan “to advance, walk; depart, go away; happen, take place; conquer; observe, practice, exercise,” from West Germanic *gaian (source also of Old Saxon, Old Frisian gan, Middle Dutch gaen, Dutch gaan, Old High German gan, German gehen)”
https://www.etymonline.com/word/goes
“third person singular of go, Old English gaæs (Northumbrian), displacing alternative goeth (Old English gaeþ) except in archaic and liturgical use.”
At least the distinction of the third person singular verb is old, although why Northumbrian won out over the other form is not explained.
The Old English “gan” is conjugated in the present indicative thusly:
1st sing. g?
2nd sing. g?st
3rd sing. g?þ [or “g?th” – the odd character is “thorn” pronounced “th”]
1st plur. g?þ
2nd plur. g?þ
3rd plur. g?þ
Readers of Shakespeare and the King James Bible are familiar with the verbs that delight in tripping up people inventing their own sentences instead of quoting directly, and the relationship is very evident:
I go, thou goest, he(/she/it) goeth; we go, ye go, they go.
(Don’t try using you instead of thou or ye, it just sounds wrong.)
So the (non-existent) Northumbrian KJV would have used instead “he(/she/it) goes.”
We seem to have dropped “we/you/they g?þ” aka “goth” pretty early, although that could be an interesting ramble on its (not it’s) own accord.
We have obviously quit using “goest” in modern English, probably because of the shift from thou and ye to you, but I haven’t seen any answer yet for why “goes” was retained.
I suppose “he go” just didn’t sound right!
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/143352/what-happened-first-ye-you-merging-to-you-or-thou-thee-falling-out-o
and
Which should, of course, be “Thou mayest consult the OED if thou dost not believe me.”
SIDENOTE
Apparently we use a word cognate with the Germanic languages (BUT “the Old English past tense was eode…; it was replaced 1400s by went, past tense of wenden “to direct one’s way” (see wend). In northern England and Scotland, however, eode tended to be replaced by gaed, a construction based on go.”) – no one said this would be easy or logical.
Not surprisingly, the Middle Dutch “gaen” is conjugated in the present indicative thusly:
1st sing. ga
2nd sing. gaes
3rd sing. gaet
1st plur. gaen
2nd plur. gaet
3rd plur. gaen
Which isn’t all that different from the Old English.
The modern German is “gehen” (pronounced approximately as “gay-in”), and the conjugation of that verb is:
(I) ich gehe(n), (you/thou) du gehst, (he) er geht;
(we) wir gehen, (you/y’all) ihr geht, (they) sie gehen.
THE END
AesopFan, thank you for your post! It was very fun to read. As I was reading it I was wondering how “gan” got into my family’s lexicon. Then I remembered that my Grandfather loved Robert Louis Stevenson. Apparently he used “gan” so much it stuck.
R2L, a rule for writing a cry of frustration! That’s based. I’ll use it for a couple of word usages that cause me to stop and swear, sometimes out loud. DISRESPECTED. I know that’s from one of America’s dialects, but it doesn’t really belong outside that dialect. Like my use of “based” above. And yes, it did actually hurt to write. When I hear/read a character say, Did you disrespected me? I want to scream, No you moron! He insulted you!
The other usage that drives me up a wall is OK, or okay. I’ve seen it in stories and shows set before WWII and fantasy settings. What the Hell’s wrong with All Right!? So, for both here is a big
AARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!
My wife just laughs when I do this, I’m glad I amuse her.
“Your right” was a great comment, but I don’t like the rule of periods inside of quotes at the end of a sentence, like “your right.” When the quotes are scare quotes, or for emphasis, I think it’s better outside, as in the diff ‘tween “you’ve right” and “your right”. I know most grammarian types would say “you’re NOT right” about this, but others might just say, since you’re the writer with your own style, it IS “your right.”
I also think dates shouldn’t have apostrophes when referring the years in plural, like my favorite dance style years, the 80s.
My pet peeve is the maddeningly common misspelling of “lose” as “loose”, “losing” as “loosing” and even “loser” as “looser”.
Another one I see a lot is “worse” instead of “worst.” As “That was the worse episode ever!” And I see it from otherwise smart and educated people.
And yes, the less/fewer error annoys me, as does “whomever” when “whoever” is correct (as in “Whomever writes that is making a fool of himself”). I’ve seen the term “hypercorrection” for this sort of error.
As for Spell Check, my impression is that not only does it not catch the its/it’s error, it often introduces the apostrophe when you’ve typed “its” correctly, which may partly explain it’s prevalence. 🙂
“ perhaps because, unlike “its,” they clearly refer to people, and are never given an apostrophe because they never become contractions”
Rather, I think it is LACK of a confounding hi’s and her’s in common usage to confuse the issue. I don’t know the real percentages, but its / it’s ‘feels’ like 50/50, thought is is probably more like 15/85. As opposed to 0/100 for X/his or hers. (Ha, just noticed hi’s (plural of Hi!, not a homonym and not normally confuse with his).
Though note how often there and their as mixed in tweets. So common homonyms of possesive does cause problems.
As Dave Barry once said, the purpose of the apostrophe is to let the reader know an S is coming next.
I suspect speech-to-text may be the major culprit in apostrophe and homophone abuse, aided and abetted by the auto correct feature, but no less assisted by ignorance and a generally lackadaisical approach to communication precision.
That we continue to tolerate such abominations as “George red his book in the shadow of the read barn because it was more comfortable their” without condemnation does not speak well of us, nor does toleration of the language corruption by various ethnic groups; “where is it at?” has been the bane of schoolteachers since, well, pretty much the invention of schools. Sisyphus had it much easier than the average 2nd grade Child Herder.
This was fun overnight, I see! Late to the party, and since this is about words and their uses:
No, one can loathe the grammar checker and be loath to use it.
To this day, that vs. which confuses me.
Now do that I before E stuff. That’s always kicked my butt.
I do run into people on line who have trouble with “it’s” and “its.” I could score a cheap victory by pointing that out, but I don’t want to be pedantic. We all get things wrong, and maybe these people have more troubles than most of us.
I did have a problem in the earlier thread. “Hitchens’ ” or “Hitchens’s “?
Commas can also be a problem. Where one puts them in, or doesn’t put them in, seems to be subjective, rather than rule-based.
“Worse” and “worst” seems to be more a matter of pronunciation than spelling. Are people really writing “worse episode ever”?
A major milestone in life: learning at an embarassingly late age that “could of” and “couldn’t of” weren’t proper English. Maybe a century from now they will be.
“Worse” and “worst” seems to be more a matter of pronunciation than spelling. Are people really writing “worse episode ever”?
Yes, I see it in at least casual communication (emails, blog comments). Its origin may be pronunciation, but then people start writing the way they pronounce, I suspect.
Abraxas, quoting from my 1968 Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition, p. 481, “Many writers prefer to use only the apostrophe with words ending in s, but you will find the use of apostrophes easier if you always use the ‘s with any singular word, whether the word end in s or not. A proper name of more than one syllable requires the apostrophe only.”
That would make the possessive Hitchens’.
Aesop, id like to converse
Kate. You too
If you’re parroting only I’ll know only I’ll know won’t i
Aesop, i suck.
that would seem about right, its possessive, it is about a state,
A new error I’m seeing a lot is “into” or “onto” when it should be “in to” or “on to.”
Do you catch onto what I’m saying? Don’t give into me if you don’t agree! 🙂
Another common error is “to” instead of “too.” I used to work with a guy who said this usage is correct.
My fifth grade English teacher would be rolling in her grave!
I’ve been surprised by how often people use “loses” instead of “losses”.
Along with Marisa’s comment on use of “loose”, et al. (Yesterday, 4:56.)
.
English is entertaining, isn’t it?
Is it not??
Or … Is not it?
And ain’t it?! … LoL!
Thanks for this, Neo. Yes, it is the most frequent and most aggravating error in written English. And it’s so simple! There is just no reason — other than simple illiteracy, and goodness knows we have that in abundance — to get this wrong. Is it not symptomatic of the culture that the auto-correct function on my phone continually “corrects” a correctly used, possessive pronoun “its” to the contraction “it’s”? I always have to proofread my texts to make sure that the intended reader doesn’t think I failed to learn the language in elementary school. Ugh!
When I was in my mid-20s I watched the Story of English with Robert MacNeal(not the correct spelling ?). I remember him saying that English has more words than any other language. And it lends itself to pidgins so readily because the structure of a sentence doesn’t really matter. In talking about this with my wife, she said when English meets a new language it mugs the new language and goes through its pockets for loose change. It seems to be a quote from somewhere, but?
I now understand all that, but my biggest problem with English is if it has more words than any other why do we use so many that are spelled the same but have different meanings? The easiest is can/can and read/read. And then there is red which sounds the same as read. With a wealth of words, why does (does female deer) this happen?
JFM, does ‘does’ do double duty?
Aesop, that excursion into Old English was gneiss!
Since this is a recycled post, according to the Hostess, I wonder if it might be interesting to track trends in the various grammatical miscarriages and abominations about which we complain in the corresponding comments across its iterations over time. I don’t know how long ago it last appeared.
My personal favorite is words with “ough” in them, such as bough, tough, though, through, thought, etc.
Tom Gray, so you are saying that your favorite dance during the 80s was the 80’s dance, right?
Cavendish: ” lackadaisical approach to communication precision.”
Or “to communication accuracy”? And upon reading to the end of your comment I found an example!! “Sisyphus had it much easier than the average 2nd grade Child Herder.” Then again, I suspect that the task of herding, even by a 2nd grade child, would be easier than the one set for Sisyphus.
Yes, English is an amazingly rich and powerful language, but it does seem to depend a great deal on context to fully understand it. Another example of precision vs. accuracy, I suppose.
Abraxas: “Maybe a century from now they will be.” Or maybe next year they could be! 🙂
JFM: “In talking about this with my wife, she said when English meets a new language it mugs the new language and goes through its pockets for loose change.” LOL! I suppose it is also looking for context?
I recall learning somewhere that English has around 200,000 words! That most communication can be handled with only 2000 words or so. Plus even a well read and learned person probably used fewer than 20,000 of them (George Will excepted?).
Kate, I would certainly be loath to disagree with you about any spelling or grammatically related issue.
I haven’t seen any answer yet for why “goes” was retained.
Not sure why that’s even a question. Regular English verbs add an ‘s’ for the 3rd person singular. You might ask why it isn’t “gos,” but then you’d have to figure out why “go” is pronounced “goh,” do “doo,” goes “gohs” and does “duz.”
And on another point, I love that English retains all those silent (usually) ‘gh’s. They reveal the history of the word and the connection to cognates in other languages.
My fav dance style was a wild abandon type, including being able to dance alone, as was common in the 80s. A fun song was Safety Dance, but I wouldn’t call it The 80’s dance. I also don’t always point out how both gray & grey are the same word spelled differently, with both spellings accepted in both the US and the UK. That’s not a homonym but I don’t know what it is.
I’d like to replace ough with o, when it fits. Like tho and altho.
In Slovakia, there are different verb words for cut, depending on what is being cut: food, wood, paper, hair; drugs, cards, money. Similar to the 40+ different words Eskimos have for snow. Yet English has far more words. And will continue to get more words as edge cases, since English has the most of that certain je ne sais quoi
(w/ multi wrong autocorrects, like quoi to quote)
Kipling has a line in the voice of a young Norman knight shortly after the Conquest.
“…my schoolmates Hugh his health.”
So I wondered if the possessive was indicated by a separate (generally indicating possession) word and ordinarily pronounced, except in diction class, as “hyoose” with the apostrophe used to signal the shortcut for possession when written.