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Grammar rant

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posted Tuesday, 28-Jan-2003
Why can't people get it? Use "it's" to mean "it is", and "its" to mean "possessive it". Compare "it's cold" vs. "its hard drive crashed." For plurals, add an "s", or drop a "y" and add "ies", etc. DON'T add an "'s". *sigh*

Bad plurals:
Aggregator's
sticky graphics and logo's

Its vs. It's:
Its your blog and it's your data.
its free for your users

Bad possessives:
under your companies or clubs domain

P.S., Ye's, I agree, I have too much time on my hand's. ;)

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comments (2)


1. a reader left...
Monday, 3-Feb-2003 7:25 pm

I can't understand why it's necessary to have the damn thing in the first place.

OR

I cant understand why its necessary to have the damn thing in the first place

Is the second sentence there, any more difficult to follow without the '? Seems like a bizzarre pet-hate to me! lol What other punctuation do you think we could get rid of?

Lisa-Jane


2. Larry Clapp left...
Monday, 3-Feb-2003 8:09 pm

Is the second sentence there, any more difficult to follow without the '?

Yes. "cant" is a real word, meaning to incline or slope, among other things. "Its" doesn't mean the same thing as "it is" (the long form of "it's"). Sometimes one could determine ambiguous meanings like this from context, but sometimes one couldn't.

... bizzarre pet-hate ...

I agree. Did I mention I have too much time on my hands? :)

... other punctuation ...

The TAB. :)