The Truth About Its

The Truth About Its The Truth About Its The Truth About Its By Maeve Maddox The first article I submitted to DWT was on the error of writing its for its. I was too late. Michael (Its or Its?) had beaten me to it. No doubt about it the error of writing its for its is on everybodys list of top ten errors that damage a writers credibility. So why do so many of us keep making this error in our drafts? As well as I know the rule, as many times as I have corrected the error in the manuscripts of others, the occasional its for its creeps into my own writing and must be caught in the final revision. Why do we do it? Because our subconscious mind tells us that the spelling its as a possessive is not un-English in the way that other errors are. We write the houses roof, so why not write its roof? The error its for its is the result of an instinctive mirroring of the possessive apostrophe s we use to form the possessive of nouns. Heres the kicker: when the third person neuter possessive adjective came into the language in the 16th century, it was spelled its for the very reason that the new form was modeled on the s of the possessive noun. The spelling its for the possessive adjective was acceptable down to about 1800 (A.C. Baugh, A History of the English Language, p. 295). Nowadays, however, to write its roof instead of its roof marks a writer as pitiably ignorant of the rules of punctuation and orthography. Im not suggesting for a minute that we throw the rule out the window. Its too firmly established for us to disregard it. All I wish to point out is that the errorwhile a mark of carelessness if permitted to escape the final revision of your manuscriptis the result of linguistic instinct, not obstinacy. Moral: Rules of behavior are often arbitrary, like driving on the right side of the road in a given country. Arbitrary or not, we ignore them at our peril. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Spelling category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Avoid Beginning a Sentence with â€Å"With†The Difference Between "will" and "shall"10 Tips for Clean, Clear Writing