Today my writing laments the continual misuse of the word "its" for the third person neuter posessive, when everyone knows its the contraction for "it is". I's hair stands on end everytime I see someone use it in they's sentence. Ive even heard one grammarian state that he's book says that personal pronouns all have a special posessive case form that doesnt use "apostrophe-S"--hes off he's rocker! Youre well aware whatll happen to you's reading material if this becomes common. Were going to have to keep we's guard up, until its clear that peopleve gotten this straight! Its dreadful!!
Not only that, some peoplere even forming they's contractions with an apostrophe. When they have a word phrase such as "it is", and they want to write it's contraction, they's spelling is "it's"!! Ill never see where they couldve gotten such atrocious grammar from, when if theyre unsure of how to use "its", they only have to look it's meaning up in they's dictionary!!
An apostrophe is a single inverted comma used in punctuation to signify a possessive: that bag is her's or a plural: he has two brother's; three bus's came at once. There is widespread confusion as to where it is appropriate to use an apostrophe. The simple answer is whenever you see a word ending in an 's', e.g. I spy seven sailor's, you shouldn't run with scissor's, the hardware store sell's video's, the planet Mar's. An apostrophe may not be used in abbreviations where it is substituted for deleted letters, as when 'did not' becomes 'didn't', and 'he is' becomes 'he's'. It may however be used liberally where the presence of the letter 's' in a word creates doubt, as in the'se are the shoe's you ordered.
It's usage rules remain a mystery to most, but here are some suggestion's:
.Use one to show plural's (You have two cow's.)
.Use one in the middle of pronoun's (The dog is her's.)
.Use one in verb's (Bobs dog overeat's.)
.Use one in front of s'es, to warn the reader's eye that an s is coming up ('She goe's to the 'store to get apple's)
.Use one at the end of any word to show the speaker is a genius (I's fixin' to be goin' to the sto'.)
.Use one after numbers' with no exceptions (I have two' cows, The 60's were a great decade, 1' + 3' = 4')
.Use several to indicate the speaker is an alien ("Kh'aaa'rr'ghh," said Deb Foskey.)
Surround text with double apostrophe's to provide emphasis, especially on a sign ("Fresh" Fish!, "Cheap" Price's!)
.Surround text with double apostrophe's to suggest irony, e.g. on a sign ("Fresh" Fish!, "Cheap" Price's!); implying that the good's sold are neither fresh nor cheap.
