What mis-stated phrases or words do you feel still need to be corrected (online or in person) in 2025?
What mis-stated phrases or words do you feel still need to be corrected (online or in person) in 2025?
Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.
Example:
In America, recently came across "back-petal", instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes".
You're viewing a single thread.
"Its"
As "its" is used to indicate possession by "it", "its" is an exception to apostrophe-s construction as used to indicate possessive forms.
"It's", used as either the contractive form or the possessive form, does not require such an exception. The distinction between the contractive and possessive forms of "it's" rarely/never introduces ambiguity; the distinction is clear from context.
The word "its" should be deprecated.
Or people could just get it right. It's really not that hard.
Found the English teacher.
Ha 😁
I have a much better plan: deprecate the stupid apostrophe for all possessives! It always looks semi-illiterate to me, like the 15th-century Dutch printsetters weren't hot on English grammar (not sure, but I bet this is in fact how it happened - German possessives manage fine without the apostrophe).
In other news, the possessive apostrophe is now allowed as part of a name (Rita's Restaurant) in German...
Yes I heard about that! The illogical abomination that is English spelling and grammar is going to destroy the world's languages one by one!
As "its" is used to indicate possession by "it", "its" is an exception to apostrophe-s construction as used to indicate possessive forms.
Most, if not all, pronouns work that way though.
"The man's arm" becomes "his arm" not "him's arm". "The woman's arm" becomes "her arm" not "her's arm". Similarly, "the robot's arm" becomes "its arm" not "it's arm".
I don't really care if people use "it's" instead of "its" , but I don't think it's a unique exception. The only thing that's unique is that it is pronounced the same way as if you tacked an apostrophe and an s on the end. If we used the word "hims" instead of "his", I'm sure people would start putting an apostrophe in there too.
"The man's arm" becomes "his arm" not "him's arm".
Similarly, "the robot's arm" becomes "its arm" not "it's arm"
But, "the man" you referred to does not become "hi". "The robot" you mentioned does become "it".
Right, and for pronouns you don't just put apostrophe s after. So you don't make "it" possessive by adding apostrophe s just like you don't add apostrophe s to "he" or "him" to make it possessive.
If you treat the pronoun "it" like a regular (non-pronoun) noun instead of like other pronouns, that is itself an exception.
If "it" is actually the subject then it would not be a contradiction.
But when "it" is a pronoun for something else (which is definitely at least 99.9% of the time.