Argh!
June 16, 2004
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Posted by Aubrey Turner
One of my pet peeves concerns the incorrect use of “it’s”. I don’t know whether it’s getting worse, or I’ve just become more sensitive to it, but I’ve been noticing it more of late.
Just for the record, its is an adjective referring to posession of something by itself (“The spider spins its web.”), while it’s is a contraction of “it is” (”It’s snowing outside.”). Because English usually uses an apostrophe and an ‘s’ to indicate the posessive form of something, confusion between the two is understandable. However, that doesn’t excuse it.
The worst example I saw was a restaurant that had the phrase “Dining at it’s best” commited to two large signs, especially when you consider that two or more people had to have seen the phrase and none of them noticed. It really stands out to me, though, because my brain translates “it’s” to “it is”, which makes no sense when you read the sign that way (“Dining at it is best”).
Categories: Random Ramblings
It’s a pet peeve of mine as well, but I’ve seen the incorrect usage so often that I’m almost used to it by now. It’s not real common to see correct use of the words its/it’s, there/their/they’re, and your/you’re, so that it’s a pleasant surprise when a forum post shows the correct form. Blog writers tend to get it right more often than not.
These are rules that were learned in, what, the second grade? It shows a slight lack of professionalism when a place of business fails to proofread its signage or brochures such that these errors are revealed to the end customer.
What’s worse is that I’ve started noticing apostrophes appearing where they were never intended to be, before the “s” in both present tense verbs and in plural nouns:
“He ride’s pretty good.”
“He goes on ride’s every weekend.”