Grammar alert!

Everyone always shoves these little lessons down people’s throats, but I’m different and special for some reason since I’m making a little preface before I go and do it. Also, I’ve only seen this lesson being taught about 100 times, instead of 1000 like the “there” and “your” ones.
The topic for today is “its,” which is much more accepted than the other two I mentioned. Let’s go over the differences between “its” and “it’s”:
Its is possessive. If something belongs to something else, it is its thing. It is in its possession. No, there are no excuses to ever use apostrophes in this case. The reason this is often mistaken is because “Microsoft’s lawsuit” or “dog’s ball” or “Jeffrey’s FREE IPOD!” is correct, but “it’s thing” is not.
It’s is a contraction of it is, ONLY. That is the ONLY time that “it’s” should be used – when someone’s saying “it’s… Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” or “It’s Walky,” or “it’s a really lame comic on Keenspot.”
Do we have an understanding? It’s so great that I’m helping the Internet; because of me, its overall intelligence will increase over time.
edits are hellof fun: This entry was meant for those that add apostrophes when they don’t need to. I’m not talking about laziness; laziness iss aweomseone.

36 comments

    1. Just about as pointless as it is in “real life.” At least, while you’re spending your entire day just clicking on random shit online, you can learn a thing or two.

  1. keep up the good work ^_^
    (realizes that he is guilty of said crime) but i realize i’m doing it, its just that i am usually too lazy to put in the apostrophie.

      1. that brings to mind the whole “eat your plate there are kids starving in ethiopia” kinda thing, it is such a minute ammount of energy…..but imagine if we could harness that power from everyone in the world…..WE COULD POWER A TOASTER!!!!!!!………’ <- 😉

  2. to be perfectly honest i think that the bigger problem is people who type in 1337 ALL THE TIME. or use stupid or pointless abbreviations (eg. “wut”) have you ever read the AOL teen forums! *winces* they all uses horrible grammer, addreviations AND text colors that make my eyes bleed. a perfect trifecta of all the things wrong with writing on the internet.

    1. Yes… fortunately (I think), we tend to distance ourselves from that. Just giving the elite crowds more reason to uphold their stature, or something stupid like that.

      1. Don’t worry ha, I don’t even want to. Heh, that was taught to me so long ago and I’ve just been told to basically forget it. It’s basically a useless rule now.

  3. how did this get 14 comments already?
    some people just dont feel like using apostrophes, i mean, if you rip on “its time to go” you have to go into “were all idiots,” “thats so retarded,” and a bunch more.

    1. As well one should. The English language may well be chaning, but it doesn’t have to turn into some kind of “I Wish I were Black” forum for “Ghetto-fabulousness” (witness: “aight,” “wutup,” and, my personal favorite, “hella tite”).

  4. I have a feeling this was spurred by my using “it’s” incorrectly twice in my last post.
    I think it’s because I haven’t been typing much of teh english lately, but I’m gonna go through my journal and see if I’m right or wrong ^_~

          1. whoops. sorry. well, what’s done is done. i guess i gotta read these comments more often. though why we’re having a conversation on jeffrey’s livejournal’s comments page is beyond me.

    1. Nah, ain’t you. It was actually the writeups in Ishkur’s Electronic Music guide. If the guy’s going to be all high and mighty about stuff, he might as well not make himself look the fool!

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