From: "Jon Corelis" <[log in to unmask]>
> One is the use of it's as a possessive, as in "This table has one of it's
> legs too short."
I think this drifts-in because most possessives (though not pronouns like
"its") are signalled by an apostrophe. It's not simply a gratuitous error
(few are), but in a horrible way emerges from the pressure of the overall
orthographic system of English.
Which makes me wonder why this *hasn't* (as far as I know) happened to
"your's", "our's" and "their's" (or "yours'", "ours'" and "theirs'").
It's poor old "it is" that I really feel sorry for -- rapidly having its
orthographic identity swallowed up by a mere possessive pronoun.
Robin
(Whose hour's space of time is short)
[Whose? Ours? Space of time is short!]
{Who's ours? Space of time, off course.}
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