I never get this right.

Jenny_Jackson

Psycho Bitch
Joined
Jul 8, 2006
Posts
10,872
"It" drives me crazy

I understand "It's" is the contraction of "It is".

But then "Its" is the possessive? This doesn't seem to follow the rule. If Harvey owns something then it would be written "Harvey's". Is that right?
 
Jenny_Jackson said:
"It" drives me crazy

I understand "It's" is the contraction of "It is".

But then "Its" is the possessive? This doesn't seem to follow the rule. If Harvey owns something then it would be written "Harvey's". Is that right?



Yep, "its" is the possessive.

Rule? We don't need no steenking rules! If English followed rules, it wouldn't be the arbitrary, self-contradicting, and frequently absurd language we all know and love.
 
CopyCarver said:
Yep, "its" is the possessive.

Rule? We don't need no steenking rules! If English followed rules, it wouldn't be the arbitrary, self-contradicting, and frequently absurd language we all know and love.

And Word seems to get this "wrong" quite often. I once relied on that stupid grammar thing to help out, now I usually ignore it.

Is there a good grammar checker that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?

MJL
 
mjl2010 said:
And Word seems to get this "wrong" quite often. I once relied on that stupid grammar thing to help out, now I usually ignore it.

Is there a good grammar checker that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?

MJL

Oh yeah, Word loves to mess up on that one. It’s also extremely prone to ignore missing prepositions, fragments or run-ons, tense shifts, mangled possessives (especially plural possessives), comma splices, and vague pronouns—along with too many other gaffes to catalog.

All computerized grammar checkers suck, IMHO, which is why I prefer to work by eyeball, supplemented by Strunk & White when necessary. The best of the bad lot is probably Grammar Slammer, which costs about $50. (You can download a 21-day free trial to see whether it’s worth buying.) Some of my students swear by it, but many swear at it.

As an alternative, you might try Language Tool, which is a free, open-source grammar checker that’s available online. My limited testing of it suggests that it does a reasonable good job of catching truly basic errors, but that it’s close to worthless for the tougher calls. Note also that Language Tool doesn’t incorporate a spell checker, but Word actually does a fair job of catching spelling errors, if you don’t switch it off as I usually do.
 
I use my own head, what word says and after all is said and done, I send it off to snoopy and let him mess with it. Its and it's are easier for me than present and past tense, I get the two confused because well heck half of the present tenses are also past tense it's all in how you use them. :rolleyes:
 
I tuned off the irritating red underlining crap of my Word features a long time ago. Half the time I run a test, it finds some word that's not in the English dictionary but has a better match in French or Italian or whatever the hell, and it then switches to that language to try and correct my mistakes. It's the most annoying thing ever.

At least now it appears to recognize most of the time whether I'm writing in German or English, and it adjusts its quotes and similar stuff accordingly.

While we're on the subject, anyone feel like editing something for me? :D

It would appear all my poor editors are getting sick, or are already there. :( I'd appreciate it a lot.
 
Jenny_Jackson said:
"It" drives me crazy

I understand "It's" is the contraction of "It is".

But then "Its" is the possessive? This doesn't seem to follow the rule. If Harvey owns something then it would be written "Harvey's". Is that right?
But it's simple; "its" matches "his" and "hers", and "yours", and "ours", and "theirs" among the possessive pronouns, none of which take an apostrophe.

The apostrophe in "Harvey's" comes from it being a contraction of the old usage as in "Harvey, his book" on the title page of autobiographies as late as the early nineteenth century.
 
snooper said:
But it's simple; "its" matches "his" and "hers", and "yours", and "ours", and "theirs" among the possessive pronouns, none of which take an apostrophe.

You take the mystery out of everything, you know that? :devil:
 
Love Those Verbs

How about verbs in our dearly beloved English?

It's sing/sang/sung or sink/sank/sunk and the one you never see or hear correctly in the past tense - stink/stank/stunk.

But it's not bring/brang/brung or think/thank/thunk.

Speaking of thinking, now that I think about it, I'll bet we took the past tenses and past participles from German when we brought these words over into English hundreds of years ago.

In German, it's

singen/sang/gesungen and sinken/sank/gesunken

but it's

bringen/brachte/gebracht and denken/dachte/gedacht.

We drifted away some on these verbs - bring/brought/brought, but I'll still bet we got them originally from German. If it were not so early in the morning, I'd get out my OED and check!

Languages are fun!
 
How about verbs in our dearly beloved English?

It's sing/sang/sung or sink/sank/sunk and the one you never see or hear correctly in the past tense - stink/stank/stunk.

But it's not bring/brang/brung or think/thank/thunk.

Speaking of thinking, now that I think about it, I'll bet we took the past tenses and past participles from German when we brought these words over into English hundreds of years ago.

In German, it's

singen/sang/gesungen and sinken/sank/gesunken

but it's

bringen/brachte/gebracht and denken/dachte/gedacht.

We drifted away some on these verbs - bring/brought/brought, but I'll still bet we got them originally from German. If it were not so early in the morning, I'd get out my OED and check!

Languages are fun!


If the plural of ox is oxen, shouldn't the plural of box be boxen?
If the pural of brother can be brethren, can the plural of mother be methren?
 
If the plural of ox is oxen, shouldn't the plural of box be boxen?
If the pural of brother can be brethren, can the plural of mother be methren?

...and how come "panties" is singular, and "bra" is plural?
 
...and how come "panties" is singular, and "bra" is plural?

Yeah. And why do we say, "pair of panties" or pair of "underwear"? Does that mean there's two of them? :confused:

She had on a pair of panties.

That one always got me.

MJL

PS. Thanks for making me 5 years younger Manu. :D
 
Yeah. And why do we say, "pair of panties" or pair of "underwear"? Does that mean there's two of them? :confused:

She had on a pair of panties.

That one always got me.

My theory is that Noah Webster was preparing us for the fact that "inflammable" is synonymous with "flammable" despite its negative prefix.:confused:

Klingon, anyone?
 
My theory is that Noah Webster was preparing us for the fact that "inflammable" is synonymous with "flammable" despite its negative prefix.
To allow Oblimo to remain completely gruntled, I refuse "take the mystery out of" this particular oddity. If I did, (s)he might go incandescent.
 
Way back, there were two of them beneath a lady's skirt - a pair of pantaloons - two tubes gathered onto one waist band but open at the crotch.
Not so much of the "way back" - my favourite ladies' knickers are all like that.
 
To allow Oblimo to remain completely gruntled, I refuse "take the mystery out of" this particular oddity. If I did, (s)he might go incandescent.

Now that's an inflammitory remark! I prefer to glow from without, thank you very much. That way I can get a tan. :D
 
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