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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. F
by 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 agoYou 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.