She is so right.

[shadesong]

To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as "Thank God its Friday" (without the apostrophe) arouses feelings not only of despair but of violence. The confusion of the possessive "its" (no apostrophe) with the contractive "it's" (with apostrophe) is an unequivocal signal of illiteracy and sets off a simple Pavlovian "kill" response in the average stickler. The rule is: the word "it's" (with apostrophe) stands for "it is" or "it has". If the word does not stand for "it is" or "it has" then what you require is "its". This is extremely easy to grasp. Getting your itses mixed up is the greatest solecism in the world of punctuation. No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, "Good food at it's best", you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot, and buried in an unmarked grave.

--Lynne Truss
Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Comments

[voldsom]

What's odd is that the first example, missing, didn't make us wince, but the second did.

(Checks for grammar twice, still gets something wrong)

[blergeatkitty.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the book yet, and I'm excited to because I think it's going to be entertaining, but I have to say that I was really, really amused by this article.

[kennfusion.livejournal.com]

Damn, I was just going to link to that New Yorker article. Which, by the way, was wrong about the use of serial commas. MLA format removes the serial comma as in "Eats, Shoots and Leaves," and I believe Chicago does now also.

[talix18.livejournal.com]

I remember being in junior high when the decision was made to put the comma preceding the "and" back in. Yes, language is fluid, people, but that doesn't mean there aren't rules.

[rhapsody-98.livejournal.com]

I like that title. *giggle*

Have you read this? (http://www.thebigshow.com/picsnsuch/archive/men_women/thingcalledlove.html)

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Hee!

The easy way to remember.

[fings.livejournal.com]

Possessive pronouns don't use apostrophes. It is "his", "hers", and "its". Would you write "her's" or "hi's"?

Re: The easy way to remember.

[dragontdc.livejournal.com]

Only if referring to a posession of the Son of Isis or the cartoon husband of Lois.

Re: The easy way to remember.

[ahsirakh.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's "his", "her", and "its".

[azurelunatic]

So right.

Though, for friends who offend, I mostly just make a Grammar Bitch post.

Of course...

[dragontdc.livejournal.com]

If one is referring by pronoun to a posession of Cousin It from the Addams Family with the intention of declaring said posession to not belong to an ungendered creature, one could say it's It's not its.

[harold3.livejournal.com]

See this is why I'm afraid of people reading my journal. Somehow I imagine a horde of torch bearing lit majors and guild writers pounding on my door and lynching me. There are too many contradicting rules in composition. All the rules change from language to language too, which makes it worse for polyglots and bi-lingual people.

You should take pity on the poor souls who accidently murder written language with such enthusiasm. We try, sometimes anyway.

oh yay i'm not the only one

[moonfire77.livejournal.com]

things like this bother me to no end. my friends all hate me because i constantly correct their grammar. mostly speaking, but if i catch something in writing, that'll get hit too.

[amberwitch.livejournal.com]

You are scaring me!

[talix18.livejournal.com]

Amen.

What kills me is the recent trend of adding apostrophes to plural nouns. It's like people are too lazy to figure out what's right so they err on what they think is the side of caution.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

It's (it is) entirely possible that I need to buy this book.

[rubian77.livejournal.com]

1, love the title. Love the joke it references as well!
2, and I thought I was bad! I'm not the only one! *happydance*
3, I think there should be a group of Marquee and Sign Police - who fine businesspeople for improper use of marquee letters and incorrect signs. Examples from my travels: Bokays instead of Bouquets, backwards letters (N, S, especially) and/or ampersands (&), Homade instead of Homemade, etc, etc...

I have an excuse...

[hasfartogo.livejournal.com]

... and it's a good one. I learned French grammar before I had to learn English grammar.

My favourite grammar books are The Deluxe Transitive Vampire. The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed and The New Well-Tempered Sentence. A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed by Karen Elizabeth Gordon.