Please indulge me in my semi-annual supercilious grammar - punctuation - spelling rant. Here's some background, here's the rule, and here are some recent examples below from CD comments of the misuse of "it's" for "its." Excuse my snobbish confusion, but I still can't figure how or why such a simple rule (from about the third grade maybe?) gives so many intelligent people so much trouble? "It's" is a contraction for "it is" and if you can't substitute "it is" for "it's" you should be using "its" (possessive) and not "it's."
1. You simply list every evil regime you can think of and then credit it's existence and it's crimes to the U.S.
1. You simply list every evil regime you can think of and then credit it's existence and it's crimes to the U.S.
2. The fact that the US imports most of it's oil from Canada and not the Saudis is irrelevant.
3. The age of the US truck fleet is at it's highest level since the interstate highway system.
4. That was were I was headed with my question about government and it's role.
5. That is natural law in it's pure form.
6. If you took the whole earth and broke it up into piles of it's constituent components....
7. Any state that wants to operate it's own system with it's own rules can do so including their own version of block grants.
Suggestion: Spend just five minutes thinking about this rule, and you'll know it and "own it" for life, and the misuse of it's will "stand out like a sore thumb" when you see it in print.
Comments welcome.
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