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I think that the mistake is common because it is triggered by a language irregularity. Normally in English, 's indicates a possessive. By that logic, somethin
by not2b 6y ago
I think that the mistake is common because it is triggered by a language irregularity. Normally in English, 's indicates a possessive. By that logic, something that belongs to "it" should be "it's", just as something that belongs to John is "John's". But no, we spell the possessive pronoun "its".
And I've often seen autocorrect try to turn a correct "its" into an incorrect "it's" or vice versa.
- hombre_fatal 6y agoSure, I can see why people mess it up. But unless you see someone consistently mess it up (thus, confusion about how it works), it's just a typo and not worth derailing conversation. At least grammar nazis can tell themselves that they're spreading wisdom.
- acheron 6y agoThere isn’t anything irregular about it, pronouns are just different from nouns. His, hers, yours, ours, theirs, its.
- jedberg 6y agoFor some reason my computer will underline both it’s and its with a red line, regardless of context. On the plus side, it gets me to double check that I did it right. But it’s still really annoying!
- eatingCake 6y ago> Normally in English, 's indicates a possessive. It seems that the opposite is true. ' indicates a contraction first, and possibly a possessive iff no such contraction exists.
- belltaco 6y ago"John is" is not contracted to "John's", so it's confusing to have "It is" contracted to "It's".
- Stratoscope 6y ago> "John is" is not contracted to "John's" John's not sure he agrees.
- samatman 6y agoFun historical fact: "John's knife" was once a contraction of "John his knife". No longer of course, the latter isn't grammatically correct in modern English. But that's where it comes from.
- acheron 6y agoThis is not true, it came from an inflectional ending in Old English. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/history-and-use-of-the-apostrophe https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/history-and-us... uses the example “cyning” (king) and “cyninges” (king’s). In theory the apostrophe stands for the missing e.
- samatman 6y agoGoes to show I shouldn't trust something, just because it was taught to me in school...
- hnick 6y ago> "John is" is not contracted to "John's" It is, actually. It's just best avoided due to confusion unless you're doing it for quoting or dialogue purposes. https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/contractions-with-proper-nouns-brians-a-baseball-fan https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/contracti...