It really peeves me to see otherwise brilliant people mixing up "its" and "it's". It's really not difficult.
The ' in a word indicates an abbreviation. In "it's", it is to indicate the abbreviation of "it is" or "it has".
The possessives "its", "his", "hers", "ours", "theirs" are NOT abbreviations.
Used in something like "I have the dog's leash", "dog's" is an abbreviation of "dog his leash". English hasn't used that form for hundreds of years, so it's long since been forgotten. But the rule remains. Possessive pronouns are not abbreviations, thus do not take an apostrophe.
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It's a natural error since the you are almost always indicating possession, which is so often indicated by 's. "Give the dog it's dinner" seems natural (though wrong) because it's, after all, the dog's dinner.
I make that error all the time even though I know better.
I'm much more annoyed by people who write "loose" when they mean "lose" or refer to "pouring" over code instead of "poring."
Heh. We all have our hot buttons
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Their now its all better :p
jpdevries
Quote from: paulp at Nov 16, 2013, 10:25 AMQuote from: dinocorn at Nov 16, 2013, 09:15 AMTheir now its all better :p
Shouldn't that be "Their now it's all better" lol
Pretty sure "Their" needs to be "There" too
I love the Oatmeal's comics on English grammar:
http://theoatmeal.com/tag/grammar and in particular "Ten words you need to stop misspelling":
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling
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And a tip for a couple of MODXers who shall remain nameless:
"This" generally refers to something close and immediate. "That" generally refers to something more distant in space or time. So code examples in posts should be referred to with "this," not "that," since the code is right there -- as in "Try something like this."
I'd guess those brilliant people let some of the smaller things slip for the greater good. At least that's my excuse for butchering the English language...
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Do try to remember that for many of us, English is not our mother tongue..
I was aiming this at those who would be expected to know better. I shall mention no names, suffice it to say that their writings are featured prominently in various pages on the MODx site.