Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/01/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Ray, I'm with you on this grammar thing, and no, for the most part, it does not get taught at school these days, though this is nothing recent as I wasn't taught most of it when I was young and I'm 44 now. We made it to the age of 13-14 when in our Latin class, our head (who was very 'old school') became astonished that so many of the class had no idea what an 'indefinite article' was, how the 'third declension' was formed, and figured a 'gerund' was something they might meet at a zoo! But to be specific about 'it's / its', I can sympathise with those who feel confused as the dismisssing of the apostrophe is counter to its use in the normal possessive sense. I.e., 'The roof's water', becomes 'its water' when we refer to the roof as 'it'. The sense of the water belonging to something has not changed, merely the substitution of the word 'roof' with 'it'. I could go on about 'your' and 'you're', 'there' and 'their' but I'll stop before my rant becomes boring, sorry is anyone still reading....? Jem ;-) - -----Original Message----- From: Ray Moth [SMTP:ray_moth@yahoo.com] And what about the spelling of "its", often miss-spelled "it's"? I suppose I'm being pedantic but this really irritates me. "Its" denotes possession; "it's" is an abbreviation of "it is". For example: "It's time the dog ate its food." "That house lets in water through its roof whan it's raining." End of rant. I feel better now :-) Regards, Ray