I'll bet this is a perennial one but couldn't find (didn't really know where to look for) anything on "its" vs. "it's".

As I get older I become more convinced there should be an apostrophe of ownership. Please help me put a stop to my wonderings for once and for all.

Stales

For what it's worth, his, her and its as possessives come from similar constructions and do not take the apostrophe. This is useful, of course, because it leaves it's free to be a contraction of it is.

Now here's where I run out of firm-ish knowledge and enter areas of discussion where I may be like the blind leading the blind, but that has never stopped me before. :

The original apostrophe for possession was also a contraction - in the earlier case, of John his table, say, becoming John's table. And so on. In that sense, the only possessives in the language are his, her/hers, its and their/theirs. All others may be considered long-forgotten contractions of these - hence the apostrophes.

Come on you ayleurs, awadians, wordsmiths and others - correct me...

The modern apostrophe s or s apostrophe for possession comes ultimately from the Old English (aka Anglo-Saxon) genitive case. Old English like modern German had different cases (inflections) to express grammatical relationships such as subject, direct object, indirect object, and possession. The most common possessive inflection was -es. When the e stopped being pronounced it gradually dropped out of the spelling but was replaced by the apostrophe to show that it "should" be there. Over time this was extended to include all possessives whether or not they had originally had an e. The idea that 's is short for his is a myth.

Bingley

The modern apostrophe s or s apostrophe for possession comes ultimately from the Old English (aka Anglo-Saxon) genitive case..

Bingley, that is very lucid and informative and almost totally news to me. Thank you very much.

Thanks for that. There goes one of my pet theories...

Hello all, I'm new to chat. Its is the neuter. "The board at its meeting" not "the board at their meeting" To use "their" you should say/write "Board members at their meeting."
The it's is a contraction meaning it is. Is this any help or am I out in left field? Wow

Welcome, wow!
I suspect you are indeed out in left field on "its" vs "their." This has been discussed here before (in the context of "their" as a politically correct way of avoiding gender in the singular - "A person should be nice to their neighbor" - a usage I abhor), but I'm betting the Brit contingent among us would find nothing wrong with the use of "their" as a pronoun for "The Board." They use collectives such as "government", sports teams' names, etc in the plural. Which kind of makes sense, if you're thinking component-wise. For example, "The board disagreed among itself" sounds absurd.

(awaiting cross-Pond/Antipodean comment, clarification, correction)

>For example, "The board disagreed among itself" sounds absurd.<

Not that absurd. Sounds like an everyday occurrence for this particular board!

(awaiting cross-Pond/Antipodean comment, clarification, correction)

Anna, I believe you're right. There is a strong tendency in the UK to refer to collective nouns in the plural. "The team were beaten...", "The Board have reached an agreement..." and so on. Anglophone and anglophile though I am, it is one tendency that jars on me. I prefer to use the singular where possible. (At my last job I ruthlessly eradicated any references to the company in the plural - at least from all our marketing literature. I couldn't stand the "XYZ are a recruitment agency..." are a???? Arrrgggghhhh.)

are a????

What's so bad about "are a"? You're not going to say "We is a team" are you?

jazz, I think the point is that (OTOH) you don't say "the team are us"?

Not that absurd. Sounds like an everyday occurrence for this particular board!

Ah so... but what else can you expect from a board ruled by Ænigma, that fun-loving, sui generis, eminence grise?

jazz, I think the point is that (OTOH) you don't say "the team are us"?

No, I wouldn't say that either. This is obviously a case, and there are many more, in which a plural noun mysteriously becomes a singular noun. It's an act of unification. "We are a team" reinforces the maxim "There is no 'I' in 'team'."

P.S. What's this new acronym of yours (OTOH)?

P.S. What's this new acronym of yours (OTOH)?


OTOH - there are four fingers and a thumb.

Anna, The idea is, if it's a discussion, to say Board members disagreed among themselves. Or,in the case of a split vote, The board members disagreed with each other. I stand by the neuter its! It's hard wired from years of newspapering.

Wow, I gather you have much more newspaper experience than I. I've since given journalism up for longer than Lent, but put in a total of 20 yrs between paper and wire service reporting and editing. Now that I've stated my credentials , my question is this: I stil feel there are times when the plural is appropriate; e.g., "My family are spending Christmas in different places this year." Would you rewrite that to say, for example, "The members of my family are..." ?

Would you rewrite that to say, for example, "The members of my family are..." ?

Annatie,
Agreed that over this side of the Pond we often use singular nouns as plurals when they refer to composites. I don't have a problem with that, though (shanks) as it's just an abbreviated reference.

I could refer to my family as a unit - "my family is very close" or I could refer to it as a composite - "my family live in a variety of different places". I suppose in the latter case I would implicitly be saying "the members of my family", but that's unwieldy.

Sometimes it's more appropriate to refer to a company as a plural, when you want to emphasize the implicit "we" for instance.

There you go, an example of Brits removing something not essential to understanding! Wonders never cease

AnnaS, dear heart, over 40 years plus born into a newspapering family. If anyone meets the criteria, it can be fairly said I have ink in my veins. That said, I am no expert a'tall a'tall...just a lot of experience.
There's another old saying in the business "There's no such thing as nine years experience on a beat, just three years experience repeated three times!"
I agree with that sentiment in relation to myself. The work is the same the Rolodex (Rolodexes? Rolodexi?) just get bigger! Aloha, WOW

I forgot to answer your question. I think I'd re-cast. This is one of those questions I have heard argued over many times during the years ... like the old USAF riddle about the canary. Endles. ALoha, WOW

>"the team are us"

Is that from the same part of speech as the phrase "Toys Are Us"?! (couldn't find backwards R)

>At my last job I ruthlessly eradicated any references to the company in the plural - at least from all our marketing literature

Yes I know that we Brits like our cozy plurals but I agree, I did the same thing, eradicating references to the company in the plural. If I wanted the plural, I re-wrote the sentence.

ha, that is exactly how most people write in French. There are so many verb tenses that when you are not sure, you just write it differently.