It's and its

I thought I had the hang of it, but my phone puts apostrophes in every time and it's difficult to erase them, so I began to wonder if it should be used in the possessive. Thank you for clarifiying it.

I really think that predictive text and auto text are deadly enemies of the Pedant.

It does make me smile (wryly),though, when I read a longish post in which someone had carefully put apostrophes in all the possessive 'its' and missed them out of all the abreviation 'its'...

To put it simply, 'it's' is ALWAYS short for 'it is' or 'it has'.

If it doesn't mean either of those, then it doesn't need an apostrophe.

Any one else out there who hates the missuse of the words brought & bought ? It really bothers me ,which then bothers me that I am bothered!!

I did think about starting another thread about lose and loose, but I thought I'd better not push it!

I agree Ana, perhaps the thread could(or should it be can) develop it to more examples of word misuse or should that be misused?

Effect and affect seem to throw some people into confusion.

I remember going to one of my children's open evenings at infants' school.
All along the corridor was a display showing animals and their young.
Each picture had a caption.....
A cat and it's kittens
A goose and it's goslings
A Dog and it's puppies

There were at least ten of them.

I was so cross but really couldn't bring myself to point it out to my child's teacher.
What would you have done?

I always preview before I send on Gransnet, as sometimes when in a rush, things have not been right, technology is great sometimes.

So many posters have it's displayed when it should be its, don't they.

My own particular bugbear that I hear all the time is when people use the word "I" inappropriately - you wouldn't think our language is that difficult to speak would you? An an example, if I were to say "It took me some time to find the house" why on earth would someone else say "It took John and I a long time to find the house"? I used to correct people (without even thinking really) until someone said "If you correct me again I'll not speak to you any more" lol. So now I keep quiet, but it still upsets me. Sometimes I think the world changed all the rules, and forgot to tell me about it.

Perhaps people might understand it more if you say there is something missed out? ie haven't = missing 'o' as in have not; or can't = missing 'no' as in can not; or wasn't = missing 'o' as in was not. These words are called contractions.

I will becomes - I’ll

you are becomes - you’re

they are becomes - they’re

Also if it belongs to someone or something you put the apostrophy before the 's' to show possession as in

her's or his but in the latter there is already an 's' so you only keep that one. In other words you do NOT say 'his's'

Here is a great link for you:

www2.le.ac.uk/offices/ld/resources/writing/grammar/grammar-guides/apostrophe

I was at school in the seventies and it was during a period when it was fashionable to not teach grammar, so I've never really understood the rules.

Unfortunately for me, DH is a total pedant as he was taught in Scotland and also has a degree in English.

Some time ago there was a post on FB about a group of parents complaining about the engagement of a teacher who was either gay or transgender, I don't remember now.
One of the comments read something like "I just want a teacher who can teach the difference between there, their and they're"

Polremy I absolutely would have had to have told the teacher!

When I was teaching apostrophes (to teenagers who should have already known the rules but don't get me started on that one) my rule of thumb was say it out loud. So, I have given the dog it's dinner (only when you don't know the gender of said dog )would be spoken as, I have given the dog it is dinner - absolutely wrong!

I do not pretend to know everything because I don't Freeflyer. It puts people off if you keep correcting them when they are wrong. I sometimes have to keep schtum.

My bugbear is when people write 'i' when they talk about themselves. My English teacher used to tell us 'When you speak about yourself STAND TALL and use a CAPITAL 'I'! My sister in law used to use the lower case 'i' in her letters to me and it really used to get me going. Can you imagine what would have happened if I had corrected her? It could have caused trouble between me and husband and maybe even a split because they were quite close....which means we would have gone our different ways and my sons and grandchildren would not be here! All because of a little 'i'. :-) Truth and consequences at play.

I agree with Witzend I taught my students it was very easy to sort out, as you only need an apostrophe if it can be expanded to 'it is' or 'it has'. Once my students understood that, they were fine. Like others I don't see why it's so tricky, unless of course the person has dyslexia or other learning disability.

It's called 'Greengrocers apostrophe's'.

Ho ho ho.

?

We was tawt proper punctuation and speling wen we went to gramar skool.

On a serious note I feel the entire education system has been dumbed down. Everyone goes to 'uni' as they now call it, possibly because they can't spell or pronounce 'university'.

There! I've said it.
They're all lacking a decent basic education in their mother tongue!

Their They're and there being the 3 that it find most irritating.

I have this and other pet hates - tomatos and potatos for instance. I also hate text-speak eg b instead of be or bee, 4 instead of four in a "sentns". Oh, and the plural of a word ending in "um" is NOT "ums" but "a" eg memorandum and memoranda. Even the BBC is guilty of laziness in language these days.

I always get stuck on bought and brought can any one advise

I find it irritating that the predictive text on my phone gives American spellings e.g. 'flavor' for 'flavour'. I do try to proof read my texts/posts before pressing send but the odd one gets through if I'm in a rush.

I agree about it's and its. So many people don't seem to know the difference nowadays.

When I trawl through my FB news feed I notice all sorts of incorrect spellings etc and flinch. The worst one is 'defiantly' used to mean 'definitely' aaargh!!

Apart from the increasing use of 'loose' instead of 'lose', effect/affect and discrete/discreet, the one that always irritates m is 'your' instead of you're'.

Sheilasue - not sure why there should be any confusion over these two without an example, thoguh I realsie they sound very similar.

"Bought" is the past tense of the verb "to buy".

"Brought" is the past tense of the verb "to bring".

So "bought" involves money - as in a bring and buy sale. You have to bring the items first before anyone can buy them. I hope this example helps.

I get fed up with hearing "I was well pleased" instead of "very pleased" or "really pleased". It just sounds wrong!

Sheilasue - if you've bought something you've paid money for it. If you or someone else brought something somewhere an item was taken from point A to point B.