Yes, punctuation counts

Maybe I’m just getting old and curmudgeonly, but I find myself growing increasingly irked when I read blog posts and tweets from communicators and PR practitioners that feature incorrect punctuation in the word “its.” My sensitivity to this error may be increasing but it seems to be occurring more and more often.

It doesn’t bother me all that much when I see the mistake in the work of people who don’t write for a living. But if you claim to be a writer, well, come on. Screwing up this fundamental bit of language is like a mechanic installing the wrong spark plugs during a tune-up.

I’m not a rigid grammarian. I split infinitives with glee and happily end sentences with prepositions when these violations of the rules make the sentence sound better. But the “its and it’s” issue isn’t negotiable and we look unprofessional and just plain dumb when we don’t get it right.

The rule is simple. It’s, with the apostrophe, is a contraction of “it is” or “it has.” Period. An apostrophe never apears in “its” for any other reason. If you can replace it’s with “it is” or “it has,” it gets an apostrophe. Otherwise, it doesn’t. And an apostrophe never appears after the word, as in its’. Its, with no apostrophe at all, is a possessive pronoun. You use its when whatever you’re talking about belongs to “it,” as in “A tiger can’t change its stripes.”

Words are the instruments of the professional communicator. Let’s use them correctly.

1. I occasionally rant on my site about exactly the same thing, despite how futile it seems to try to change things. It’s very frustrating to see formal communications materials, in particular, with simple grammar errors. I wince whenever I see them… and then hit “delete.”

   Posted by Dave Fleet  on  09/26  at  07:04 AM

2. Shel,

   Your absolutely right. And we need these reminders constantly, son;t we?

   Posted by Doug Haslam  on  09/26  at  07:54 AM

3. It’s/its errors drive me CRAZY! When I was in college the rule was if you used an incorrect ‘it’s/its’ you got an automatic fail on that assignment—helps you learn pretty quickly! (Though the sad fact is everyone should know that by college anyway!)

   Posted by Kelly Rusk  on  09/26  at  08:54 AM

4. I share your outrage, Shel. And the error is showing up everywhere, including newspaper reporting. It drives me crazy.

   Posted by Ron Shewchuk  on  09/26  at  01:43 PM

5. Here’s how I help my students remember the rule:

   it’s = It is - the “i” fell, the dot remained: it’s

   its = can you replace it with his/her?

   “It’s hard for the tiger to change its stripes”. TEST:

   His hard for the tiger to change his stripes.

   Get it?

   Posted by Mihaela V  on  09/27  at  04:55 AM

6. Another classic for me is spelling. Working in the stationery industry, it’s amazing how many people mis-spell the word…giving the impression that our industry is static! See http://tinyurl.com/46qq56

   Posted by Jane Rowe  on  09/27  at  07:53 AM

7. This pisses me off less than your and you’re.

   But you’re right about its and it’s, but your use of let’s rather than lets threw me. I’d like to propose we drop the apostrophe in all uses of the word lets, just because I can’t think of any other examples where we drop a u. According to Merriam-Webster, we’ve been using let’s since 1567, so it should be clear what’s meant in context of a sentence. What do you think?

   I’ve also noticed many people mix up then and than. I hope these are just typos.

   Even though I’ve made a living from writing, I’ll be the first to admit that I rarely write as well as I did in the years before blogs and twitter.

   Their jest isnt time to right good.

   Posted by Dominic Jones  on  09/27  at  08:45 AM

8. Dominic, the use of the apostrophe in let’s comes from the fact that it’s a contraction for “let us,” as in “Let us use them correctly,” as opposed to “common usage lets us punctuate any way we like.”

   How about further and farther?

   Posted by Shel  on  09/27  at  10:42 AM

9. My eighth-grade English teacher promised to fail us if we misused “its” and “it’s.” Equally annoying to me is seeing the use of the apostrophe-S to form plurals of perfectly ordinary nouns.

   But Grammar Girl will assure you that neither ending a sentence with a preposition nor splitting infinitives is actually poor grammar.

   Posted by Sallie Goetsch (rhymes with "sketch")  on  09/27  at  12:44 PM

10. Sallie took mine before I could post. I can’t stand the its/it’s issue, but I also can’t stand using ‘s to pluralize words.

    But, since I’ve said that, I’ll start making punctuation errors consistently now!

    Kevin

    Posted by Kevin Behringer  on  09/29  at  10:24 AM

11. If you cant stand the poor use of apostrophe’s, heres’ a site that might appeal to you:

    http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/

    Posted by Al Shaw  on  09/29  at  01:09 PM

12. Even scarier is that these misspellings are finding their way into advertisements and, even more commonly, websites. Not only is spelling increasingly going by the wayside, but people don’t proofread anymore either. I expect or at least tolerate this kind of thing on blogs, but when I see these mistakes in corporate publications or websites, my initial reaction is “they’re careless,” or even worse—“these people are idiots.”

    Posted by Julie Hall  on  09/30  at  02:29 AM

13. Fellow curmudgeon here. I HATE this mix up, especially when professional communicators make it. Drives me batty. The occasional mistake is fine, we all make them, but some consistently make this error, which to me means they simply don’t know they are making the mistake.

    Jen

    Posted by Jen Zingsheim  on  09/30  at  09:14 AM