--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, t3rinity <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > > > And "its" as a possessive never, EVER has an > > apostrophe. > > Judy, don't come down too hard down on her. This would be a typical > German thing to do. In German, possessives are written with > apostrophes. The problem in Germany right now is, that the English > usage has mixed through popular culture so much that both versions > are officially accepted now.
That's what illiterates would have you believe. :-) It's not true, no matter what you might have heard. The misuse of 'its' and 'it's' is one of the easiest ways to tell whether a writer of English cares enough about the readers of his or her writing to use it properly. I would venture to say that there is no book of English grammar out there that presents this misuse as "acceptable." English is a *bitch* to learn. It often seems to have more exceptions than it does rules, and many of the rules don't seem to make sense. While what you say about "accepted usage" is true about some things (like the use of "try and do something..." instead of the proper "try to do something..."), I for one hope that Americans never get so dumbed down as to forget how to properly use 'its' and 'it's' properly. The bottom line of language misuse, in my opinion, is what we've seen here recently. Someone makes a mistake, one that they've been making for a long time, someone else corrects it, and the first person, rather than wising up and *learning a little something*, claims that they misspelled the word or used the improper grammar on purpose "for effect." I'm with Judy on this one -- railing about the quality of US education while demonstrating an appalling disregard for the language that educa- tion is based on just rings false and conveys a sense of laziness. It's like saying, "Yeah...its sad that there all so dumm...not like me," and expecting people to take you seriously.
