Honestly I’ve done mostly forgot, and with the proliferation of AI technologies and all the typos AI has read from in the training models, I bet AI isn’t always right about this either.
I usually just don’t care anymore, whether the autocorrect puts the apostrophe in or not.
I don’t, but I also don’t have autocorrect on. I’ve just given up on trying to remember.
Yes.
I do. But only because it is burned into my memory. When I was in college one of my professors got really angry at our entire class because nobody knew this grammar rule. So he explained it, and for some reason it stuck with me.
But to your other point, yes, autocorrect often gets it wrong. I’ve had to remove the unneeded apostrophe on the possessive ‘it’ so many times.
π is burned into my memory, up to 50 decimal places, since age 10. So is the alphabet backwards, since age 10 as well.
But when you see typos going on for 30 years regarding a simple apostrophe difference, you might start to forget which way is correct.
It’s about as important to me as which country uses a dot or a comma to separate thousands…
$1,000 … £1.000 … ???
You forget about us space people! 1 000 $. Or 1 000 £.
It’s a pet-peeve of mine and I haven’t forgotten
Please don’t pet your peeves in public, Gary got arrested for that three years ago.
I feel like that one isn’t that hard to remember because “its” stands out as a common exception to the rule for possessive singular nouns.
“It’s” is a contraction of “it is” while “its” is possessive.
Over the years, I’ve become more and more unsure on that one. I usually have excellent spelling and grammar, but it was so long ago when I learned the difference between its and it’s, that I’ve gradually assumed I’ve seen so many typos over the decades that I just couldn’t remember for sure.
“its” is comparable to “his” or “her”, not to e.g. “Dave’s”.
I think you meant hers, with an S, but I get your point. Does that mean “it” is/was meant to function as a pronoun?
Rhetorical question for the pronoun nazis, if I don’t know the sex/gender of a kitten, I’m gonna call it an it. If I don’t know the sex/gender of a human, I’m probably still gonna call it an it.
I meant her. Mike and his guitar; Sarah and her violin; The computer and its speakers.
The obvious issue with ‘it’ as a pronoun for people (or in my opinion mammals or other sentient animals) is that it’s literally objectifying them: The main use of ‘it’ is for inanimate objects. Sometimes that’s used for effect, for example calling a pedophile an it. But unless you really dislike a person of nonspecific gender, just call them a them.
Them was originally intended as plural though. When did people decide to jank up the defined language? They/them/those are meant as plural.
And I might have made a subtle mistake earlier. He/she/it are pronouns, him/her/it as well.
His/hers/its are possessive pronouns. Can we try to stick to some sort of standard in the language, with clarity and without offense?
Singular ‘they’ is centuries old. Apparently even older than singular ‘you’. It’s only recently that people tried to make it a rule that it should only be used as a plural, but really it’s used in natural language as a singular all the time like I did. (Did you notice it in the middle of my previous comment, not just the end?)
You never used the word they, you used the word them multiple times though.
Care to compare and contrast the difference?
It’s the same word in a different grammatical situation.
I do, it’s really not that hard. I was taught when I was 10 or so, never seemed hard.
Now do comma splice.
Commas in English were never my strong suit. I never really learned the rules. So if you see me placing my commas wrong, rest assured that’s exactly where they should be if I was writing in Czech.
I, for one, am, a fan, of, Shatner commas.
I do and it’s not even my native language. Even words like there, their, were, where, than and then, i have no issues with. One thing that does confuse me is with names, because that is used differently than my european country.
Autocorrect seems to mess it up more than it fixes it for me.
I remember. And disregard it unless context isn’t enough for people to tell.
Mr Francis, my year 10 English teacher told me:
It’s “its”, not “it’s”, unless you mean “it is”, in which case it is “it’s”.
That was 40 years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it.
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Ultimately, it’s what it’s.
AI is just next probable token.
With my crap health and back, it is nearly impossible for me to tell what state of mind I’m in due to severe ongoing sleep deprivation. I’m on here when I’m pretty much useless for anything else due to pain. You can almost predict 1:1 how bad I’m doing based on: its it’s, they’re their there, your you’re. My coherency breaks are generally the long pauses it can take to collect a thought or interruptions by others.
At this point, I project myself in what I see from others. I’m probably the worst offender, but I assume everyone’s mistakes have an understandable reason. Experience and hardship carries lots of empathy for others.
I do. I proofread everything to make sure that swipe typing got it right, and I judge people who get it wrong.
It does bug me that the possessive form (fundamental to the language) rather than the informal contraction is the non-standard one.
Your Apostrophe looks like an Arbitrary Value.
LOL, at the end of the day, it’s not really a big deal though. Hell, weren’t there once strict rules on the semicolon ; …?
Anyways, thanks everyone for the comments and the reminder, not like I’m gonna remember tomorrow.
Happy New Beer! 🍻
