5 ms·

He's missing this one Fill in the gap: a) it's b) its "The hacker got access to the server and killed ... processes" lolz

• burgerbrain 15y ago
  The problem with this one is that at one point in the English language's history (17th/18th century I believe), the correct possessive form of "it" was "it's", which is arguably more correct^. ^You make nouns possessive by adding a saxon genitive to signify the distinct possessive-izing "s" sound. The word "it" is also made possessive with this same sound when spoken, but for the sake of a contraction (read: abomination ;)), we have decided to arbitrarily remove the saxon genitive and replace it with a simple "s". The excuse for this inconsistency is "well it is a pronoun, not a noun, so this is not an inconsistency" does not take into account that English is a language primarily spoken. Written English, where reasonably possible, should approximate the spoken constructs. Demonstration: He stepped on the cat*'*s tail. He stepped on its tail. Notice that although these two sentences are expressing the same idea and are of the same approximate form (they would be spoken similarly), the second has dropped the saxon genitive. This is clearly, if you look at it ignoring what you were taught in primary school thanks to Webster worship, an absurd change. At the very least, people who use saxon genitives with the word "it" do not deserve the ridicule people like to heap on them. "it's"/"its" is not a "there"/"their"/"they're" scenario.
  • corin_ 15y ago
    I disagree, I think it/it's is completely comparable. Sure, there's a long history to it, but it has evolved, and there are two reasons why it is comparable. First, we weren't alive back when "it's" was used this way. Nobody currently alive was. There's no argument of "they're doing it the old way", because it's not even in living memory. As of the current standards, and those of the past 200 years, they are simply doing it the wrong way. Second, it can't even be argued that they are confused because of the old way. Nobody accidentally writes her's, their's or your's. The reason people write it's is nothing to do with the possesive apostrophe, it's purely because of confusion with the "it is" contraction.
    • burgerbrain 15y ago
      You seem to misunderstand me: I'm not suggesting that people use "it's" because they aren't up on the new conventions, or even that "it's" is better because it is the old way. Rather, I am simply suggesting that the old way is better (for the reasons stated above). I object to the assertion that people are accidentally inserting "it is" where they mean possessive "it". Certainly people such as myself who are strongly verbally oriented type the saxon genitive reflexively to reflect the spoken possessive-ization construct. In a similar way, I also very commonly "improperly" insert commas in my sentence to signify pauses instead of using them merely syntactically. Furthermore, I maintain that "its"/"it's" is not equivalent to "they're"/"their"/"there". The difference between the first is purely convention, while the second set of words are only related to each other incidentally. "Nobody accidentally writes her's, their's or your's." Actually, I do quite often.
  • jokermatt999 15y ago
    My way of remembering its/it's is to associate it with his/hers rather than the typical 's. `The cat stepped on his foot.` `The cat stepped on its foot.` Still, I don't get annoyed at its/it's because it's such an easy mistake to make. I still do it occasionally without meaning to. I don't quite get how people consistently get their/there/they're or loose/lose wrong, but that's just me.
    • dasil003 15y ago
      Totally. The "loose" thing drives me nuts for some reason. Other types of misspellings don't really bother me unless there's a ton of them, but for some reason I always hear that one out loud in my head and it destroys my opinion of the writer every time.