Grr. Everywhere I go on the Internet, I see "it's" used instead of "its". 99% of people do it. Do they not teach English at school any more?

Here's the rule:

GET IT RIGHT! </li>

There, rant over

[EDIT: the same applies to "theirs", "yours", etc. - but, funnily enough, not "one's". People usually get these right though.]

their is no need to get angry its only a DUMB mistake;)

And you know what I hate? Sigs that are more than 6 lines long!

I find it amusing that the JeffK fan around here niggles over "its". His hoempaeg must've put you in cardiac arrest when you first saw it

d00d ... it's a crappy rule (exception, really) anyway. I'm hoping that it will be abused enough that the entire thing will die out, just like "their" is now allowed to refer to a singular (eg "everyone get their coats"). English should evolve and improve, this is just a step in the right direction.

23: Jeff K does it deliberately. Most people don't. Huge difference.

Zaphos: die kplzthx

... I am right, though. Your pet rule is an unneeded inconsistency with the english language.

Are you kidding me? Who cares man!! I rarely even use apostrophies. If you are planning on changing the world, start small. But not that small. sheesh.

Kazzmir: Heathen! Fear the wrath of the mighty Apostrophe Protection Society!!!

Bruce: Why don't you join up?

From his Q&A column:

Notice also how he picks up on the typos in e-mails he receives:

Ahhh I see taht I have inspired others to become annoyed by teh massive overuse of apostrophe's. Taht i's, BTW, my #2 pet peeve (as anyone who ha's ever been on #allegro could tell is tehy ever misplaced an apostrophe ), right after human's
[edit] OMGOMG! An Apostrophe Protection Society? Sign me up!!!!11~

Yes, misusing "its" is an online epidemic. Its everywhere you look.

And not just online... who here reads teh descriptions and stuff for various household products? I.E. shampoo, cereal, small atomic warheads, etc..

Besides the words that people mix up:

• its - it's

• their - there

</li>
there's the list of words that are always misspelled on the internet:

• separate - seperate

• guard - gaurd

• thief - theif

• rogue - rouge

</li>

Googlefight them and see for yourselves

Bush vs. Bin Laden

Those apostrophes have been stolen by market traders who use them on their stalls to advertise products like
apple's
cauli's
video's

Pete

Learn finnish. No apostrophes. Well, not much. Few enough to keep you from confusing yourself.

Cage: sorry mate, I didn't get it from you. I was brought up this way

The truth is, I don't usually object to typos in places like forums and chat services. They happen. Also some people have genuine difficulty spelling (dyslexia anyone?) and it helps no one to get on there backs for that.

However, spelling is important in anything polished you do. If you know your not the greatest speller in the world, then for goodness' sake get someone to proofread! I will sometimes be available to do just that; theirs no harm in asking me

jhuuskon: no language should ever have more than say, 4 cases... and Finnish has 14
AFAIK only Hungarian is worse in that regard...

BP: it doesn't matter at all on IRC - but it's embarrassing when commercial games have misspellings. When did they fix the "target succesfully bombed" typo in CS - v1.4 or something?

Don't you have it backward. Isn't 'its' an invalid word? It should be it's.

Plural of it is they or them.

DanielH: you desperately need to read an English Usage book. I know I'm right.

[EDIT: Here you go.]

I am hoping that he is being ironic

Maybe, but it's such a common mistake that one can never know. I'm sure many people genuinely think what DanielH just said is the truth. Speaking of which, he also needs to revise question mark usage?

The It's versus Its page

You are right Matt Perry. I always got horrible marks in English.

I was just thinking that

it's is it is
or
it's bike is possesive like dan's bike

Good page. I'd forgotten about "it has" - first post edited

Oh, and "possessive"

Sorry for snapping by the way.

I agree. So many people use it's when it's blatantly its! Specially since it's quicker to write its. Rather change all it's to its.

Use it's in the wrong place once more and nnnNNNNEE!! ne ne NNNEEE.

There's something wrong with me.

JL: Its probebly an allurgy to bad speling/grammer or somthing.

Use "it's" incorrectly again and smashm.xm will start playing on your computer. MOOOOOOORE BRAAAAAAIINS!!!

'Tis curious, though

Tis is such a cool word! 'twas and always will be!

From now onwards I'm going to use tis instead of it's.

Uhh... don't forget the apostrophe then

Um ... English doesn't teach actual English You read stuff like 1984, MacBeth or The Great Gatsby and try to figure out what the little green light on the dock means ...

Yeah, I'm fully aware of that. However, we did do a "pilot test" for an English spelling, punctuation and grammar thing they were possibly introducing the subsequent year. Maybe things are looking up, at least in this country

Your teacher liked that green light, too? Huh, stupid light.
Grammar is supposed to be taught in lower English; upper English is supposed to require essays that prove you know it. If the essays have flaws, then points should be taken off to enforce proper usage. It would be a good system, except I don't think most highschools require even close to as many essays as they should, and if the teachers aren't rigorous in caring ... well, it just fails to teach.

People don't need to be, on the whole, 'informed crusaders' to change language for the better. The language is still changing towards my side, and the "rule" is very very clearly a flaw in the standard. It's not like this is going to hurt backwards compatability or anything ... there's no reason not to just fix the language!

Edit: Fine, pretty now.

I guess many of your points took off

Zaphos: I think you'll find that no informed writer deviates from the its vs it's rule. The Internet may be saturated with the error, but published books are not. Good luck in getting your wish

Capital E for English by the way.

Perhaps he's allocating points to his "proper spelling and grammar" attribute?

Bruce: I think you'll find that there are some who do; 'tis possible to get all kinds of low-grade crap published, and people rely more and more on spellcheck and MS grammar to do the work for them ...
To the point, though, obviously a proofread work is going to conform to the current standards like that one, which hasn't been damaged nearly enough to fall out of style. It'll probably take a few more generations to fix itself, if it ever does, without somebody making a hissy fit about it ... and it really doesn't matter much.

About Gnolam's corrections ... heh, funny. I'm not writing an english paper, though.

When I first saw the topic in Recent Threads, all I could think was " ... Monty Python's Flying Circus". If you've seen it, you know what I mean.

Thank you very much X-G. Now I won't be able to get the picture of Terry Jones playing a piano wearing nothing but a bow tie out of my head...

X-G: I thought that too, partly because BP is evidently a fan
The "It's" Man was my third avatar

Gnolam
Gnolamin
Gnolamia
Gnolamiin
Gnolamista
Gnolamille
Gnolamiksi
Gnolamilta
Gnolamina
Gnolamissa
Gnolamista
Gnolamilla
Gnolamitta

Plus the plural form of each, and the 2 VERY rare plural-only cases.
Piece of cake

Gnolam
Gnolameiden
Gnolameihin
Gnolameiksi
Gnolameilla
Gnolameille
Gnolameilta
Gnolamein
Gnolameina
Gnolameineen
Gnolameissa
Gnolameista
Gnolameitta
Gnolameitten
Gnolameja
Gnolamia
Gnolamien
Gnolamiin
Gnolamiksi
Gnolamilla
Gnolamille
Gnolamilta
Gnolamitta
Gnolamissa
Gnolamista
Gnolamin
Gnolamina
Gnolamit
Gnolamista

This is probably the complete list of cases which apply to noun "Gnolam". If I remember correctly, there are still a couple of cases which look just them same as the ones already mentioned, but still have a whole another meaning (determined by the context). Also there are cases which do not apply to this word not all (after all, what would complete chaos be without having a different set of rules for nouns, verbs, etc), not to mention all the special rules and exceptions for everything! ^^

An example how three other finnish words build their cases.

Gnolam - Gnolameja - Gnolamiksi - Gnolameiksi
Puu    - Puita     - Puuksi     - Puiksi     
Kissa  - Kissoja   - Kissaksi   - Kissoiksi  
Lanka  - Lankoja   - Langaksi   - Langoiksi

Heh. And Bruce here considers "its" as a big linguistical problem.

Whoa!

Remind me never to move to the Finnish-speaking parts of Finland

Why not, Finnish is cool. I'd like to learn it, but I don't think it's gonna happen.
So I make my own language instead, Aoni.

The usage of ITS and IT'S depends on the sentence. IT'S, according to every english class I've been in for 13 years, means IT IS. ITS, according to my english classes, means ownership to the object that IT is pointing to. Of course that is just American (specifically Indiana english) which acordding to everyone that isn't American it's a dumb way of talking. The same could be said about Americans that don't speak a certain language. For example, when I learned Spanish I thought the way the worded sentences was kind of annoying and the way they spelled some of the words got to me too. That is my opinion though I don't get picky when someone messes up the language:P. It's not my place to correct someone or to piss and moan about little pathetic mistakes like that, but it is my place to learn to code and draw better so I can get into a faster mode to code games and do graphics for them quicker. So with that I'm off to code and draw both 2D paper and pencil art and pixel art.

Aha, so you do know the difference between "its" and "it's". Then your error in the other thread was inexcusable! INEXCUSABLE!!

... you are aware that you just said the exact same thing that I said in my first post, right? I mean, I don't usually read the whole thread if it's very long, but talk about skipping the first post!

So what is the correct usage for the following sentences:

"Its easier just to accept that other people aren't as particular about grammar. Its simply a matter of removing the nipple clamp from your perineum."

I only point things out when people make the same mistakes repeatedly and are otherwise good at spelling. That way, their games, and other polished work where spelling does matter, might be improved

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA...

When I opened this post I was expecting to see...

"It's........ Monty Python's Flying Circus!"

Mike_Vox

"And NOW for something COMPLETELY different"

wanders off

Mike: you aren't the first to säy tha¸t, you knøw.

And NOW for something completely different ...

gabe_kart.gif gabe_kart.gif gabe_kart.gif

And? This time I didn't edit. Seriously, It's spelled the same as you have.

COMPLETELY < mine - yours > completely

something tells me this gonna turn out to be another famous WTF thread;)

WTF OMFG ASL KPLZTHX KEKE

Anyway, Tom ain't lying - he spelt it right first time (or at least got it right by the time I saw his post for the first time). Bravo!

I wasn't making a commentary on his spelling I just thought I'd be specific about my stresses

Yeah, I got that...

But many languages have completely different stress rules from English. For example, in French, the emphasis is always on the last syllable of each clause (minus one if the last syllable is a mute 'e'). So, if I want to emphasise "I" as I did above, I need to add a word:

Ouais, moi je l'ai compris...

w0w. Im just soooo udes to poepel kritizicing my seeplin.

edit: w0w. thats even hard to pronounce.. sheesh.

Thomas Fjellstrom: In my sp33k, taht would be:
W0hw.. im jots os youst ot p33p5 coriktiink ym pseelenk.
You gotta come to #allegro more often >:]

I spend enough time here as it is letalone the fact that theres a few (regulars) on #allegro that annoy the bloody h311 out of me. I suppose I could /ignore them... but heh.

Oh, and I just had to update my version of XChat to the latest... Not a great Idea. I have no clue how to turn off the AA. It's really hard to read IRC with AA. But I suppose the AA text is better than parts of the chat screen not updating... That is weird.

What's AA? I assume you don't mean anti-aliasing...

JA. Thats exactly that I mean. The job that the gnome font renderer does is absolutely atrocious. I actually prefer CLEAR fixed width fonts. Easier to read when the characters arn't mushed and blended together.

On the other hand, in windows XP with it's new "ClearType" "technology" is plain sweet on my 17" LCD monitor. Lets just say that X's Fonts are Horrible.

hehe Cage your avatar is ~Cage Wilson (negation of)

There the one's that i hate.
I normaly don't even notice the "it's" think anymore, although once apon a time it did bother me...

btw, 23, '1984' is one of favorite books.

Its/it's is only an exception if you don't really understand how the English language is formed. Otherwise you can see the difference between personal pronouns and verbs. In which case you are well aware that the only English language exception to a general case apostrophe for ownership rule is "one's"!

GRR. Thou shalt play smashm.xm immediately.

~ : Negation of or, as I commonly use it, almost And that's not a pic of me, that's some über-sexy male model I found on teh streets and asked to pose for my avatar ^^

Grrr... and that annoying Clippy... (/me just saw what all teh fuss was about yesterday). Are there any sites dedicated to teh pain, torture and death of Clippy similar to how www.mustbedestroyed.com and www.pikachumustdie.com were to Pikachu?

Actually ... there is.

Well.. Clippy is included in office xp... but there is a few others to select too.. And you can turn them OFF! Yay!
Wow ... it's my first post in this thread!

ARRRGGH! I've got the screaming **ITS!!

<Sprints for the nearest toilet>

sech: you can turn clippy the fucking paper shittyclip off in Office 2000 as well..

and yes, this is my first post in here as well (iirc, my memory's a bit bad.. and i'm only 15.. ) and I won't be using that word(no, the title of the thread silly..) becuase I used it enough in the QNX thread.

JaTeR

I think office xp (= office 2002) is almost the same as office 2000..
me.age=19;

See how I avoided 'its'? Oops..