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I remember writing what I felt was thoughtful essay for a history class I took in first year UNI. I did a lot of research, and being a CS major, I Think I craf

I remember writing what I felt was thoughtful essay for a history class I took in first year UNI. I did a lot of research, and being a CS major, I Think I crafted a solid logical argument. The week after the TA started complaining about people's grammar, specifically saying that you can't communicate you ideas if you can't form grammatically correct sentences. She specifically called out the difference between 'it's' and 'its.' At that point I knew she was talking about my paper, so I chimed in: "Oh you're talking about my paper!" Sorry about that! I think this is where CS hurt me, cos we are used to consistent rules. When used like this 's denotes possession: "Dave's car." So I sometimes still over-apply this rule to "it" i.e.: "It's car." I found the whole exchange peevish, which is why I decided to lean into the critique with the TA in front of everybody. I told her to scan the room and look at all the faces assembled. I told her that if she only was going to consider an argument valid if the grammar was perfect¹, then she wasn't likely to be pleased. Almost everybody in the room had a different mother language than English, including myself. 1. This was in an era before spellchecking became common.

molotovh 4y ago
Since we're discussing pedantic grammar rules here anyway (sorry): the problem here is not that the rule is inconsistent, but rather that you are applying the wrong rule. "Its" is not merely a modification of the possessive noun like "Dave's". "Its" is a possessive pronoun like "his" or "her", a separate (but related) class of word. We don't write "he's car" or "she's car", so we also don't write "it's car". But that said, this is one is tricky specifically because the accepted possessive pronoun so closely resembles a modified possessive noun. I agree that your logic at least makes sense and I think that makes "its/it's" the least offensive of the common grammar mistakes. I don't see it as nearly the same degree of mistake as "your/you're" "two/to/too" or "there/their/they're". For example, if you were discussing the soundtrack of a movie about a killer clown demon, it would be entirely appropriate to say "It's soundtrack is well-produced." :-)

molotovh 4y ago

Since we're discussing pedantic grammar rules here anyway (sorry): the problem here is not that the rule is inconsistent, but rather that you are applying the wrong rule. "Its" is not merely a modification of the possessive noun like "Dave's". "Its" is a possessive pronoun like "his" or "her", a separate (but related) class of word. We don't write "he's car" or "she's car", so we also don't write "it's car". But that said, this is one is tricky specifically because the accepted possessive pronoun so closely resembles a modified possessive noun. I agree that your logic at least makes sense and I think that makes "its/it's" the least offensive of the common grammar mistakes. I don't see it as nearly the same degree of mistake as "your/you're" "two/to/too" or "there/their/they're". For example, if you were discussing the soundtrack of a movie about a killer clown demon, it would be entirely appropriate to say "It's soundtrack is well-produced." :-)