Literacy

[Nanohedron]

I yam a purfeshinull.

[s1m0n]

No, I'm doing it because I've noticed a strong correlation between fussing over minor typos and writer's block, to which I am prone. All through university and my early professional career I was a clean-copy writer. My first drafts would be publishable, and frequently were. This was an asset in the typewriter era but has diminished ever since, and it also tends to either cue or strengthen episodes of block. Now, in a speed-medium like an internet forum, I let my fingers do the spelling. If I don't engage my critical brain, it can't impede me.

It's interesting that cutting out my copy-editing facilities tends to release only certain kinds of errors. Homonyms, for instance. I appear to compose by sound, not visually, which is the reverse of the way I read. For very very common words, it's its etc, its all muscle memory, and I don't think about them at all.

[benhall.1]

With the rising tide of stupidity an all, isn't it funny that on the one test that hasn't lowered it's standards - the IQ test - people are doing so much better in recent years that it's had to raise them?

You're just doing it to provoke me now ...

You missed one.

Er ... No, I don't think so. The point about the second "it's" in S1m0n's post, is that it's correct. Like that one, just there. The first one was the incorrect one.

I sort of get what you're saying, S1m0n. It's just that the redundant apostrophe in the impersonal possessive pronoun is becoming so prevalent. And it's just wrong. It really bugs me. Sorry.

[s1m0n]

The apostrophe is the most unstable grapheme in english, as well as one of the youngest. 'Correct' usage has never been stabilized for long, if at all. The one that annoys me the most is the plural apostrophe following initials, an acronym or a numeral. TV's or 90's instead of TVs and 90s. Yuck!

However, it's a lost cause. Ultimately all spelling and grammar standards are what people are using, and like everything else in any living language they are subject to constant change. I expect to lose the fight on 70's and you might want to prepare yourself for losing on it's.

[benhall.1]

I can't! The reason that particular one gets to me is because it alters the meaning. The apostrophe in "it's" as used correctly means that there is a letter missing. It means either "it is" or "it has". It can't ever mean "its" in a possessive sense, as in "The dog was happy. Its tail was wagging madly." I mean, you wouldn't write "hi's" or (slightly different grammatical import) "her's", would you?

Anyway, there's the bloody cuckoo again, calling for his breakfast, so I'd better get on with mine ...

[s1m0n]

It can't ever mean "its" in a possessive sense, as in "The dog was happy. Its tail was wagging madly." I mean, you wouldn't write "hi's" or (slightly different grammatical import) "her's", would you?

Sure it can, and does in all but irregular personal pronouns. Posession in regular nouns in English is indicated either synthetically with ___'s or analytically with of ___. It is somewhere in the middle, because it is not nearly as ancient as the other personal pronouns (He, she, me, you, his, hers, mine, yours, etc) all of which are among the oldest and commonest words in english. Which is why they're irregular in the first place. "It" didn't really begin to appear* until English lost grammatic gender, which was in the switch to Middle English in the tenth century, and the final form (its/it's) dates only to the sixteenth century, which is the horizon of early modern english. That's about the age (or at most a century earlier than) that the apostrophe began to coalesce out of the punctus elevatus, which is likely why we still don't have consensus about where they should and shouldn't coincide.

*The shorter OED says: "OE. hit, the neuter nominative and accusative of the stem hi-, the nom. masc. of which is he. The dative and genitive were him, his as in the masc. During the ME period, hit lost its ititial h, first when unemphatic, and at length in all positions, in standard english. In XVI the tendency arose to restrict the genitive his to the male sex. For the neuter was substituted at first thereof or of it, etc., and finally a new factitious genitive (posessive) it's."

By 'factitious', the OED means 'made up', 'invented', or 'new'.

For Steve, note the OED's tight use of commas.

[benhall.1]

"Sure it can". Well, only if you're being factitious about it. The 's to indicate possession for non-pronouns, still indicates a loss of letters, viz "Alexander his". Which is why it's unnecessary for "its", which is a word, relatively recent (16c?) or not, in its own right.

[s1m0n]

The 's derivation from his is a myth. The old english genitive varied, but in the commonest declensions was something like ~es or ~as. They're what collapsed into 's. There was never a period in which the common genitive marker was noun + his. In other words, the S was already there; it goes all the way back to proto-germanic. The mystery is why the new grapheme (apostrophe) was applied to disambiguate one kind of noun + S from another, but we can see the same process at work in the way people have adapted to the loss of periods in initials (TV instead of T.V.) and the need to create upper-case plurals (TVS vs TV'S) by tossing in an apostrophe. Call it a linguistic change created by advertising.

[SteveShaw]

Hey, I spotted that, Simon! There are sensible rules regarding consistent use of commas but there are other situations in which commas may be used at the discretion of the writer (would anyone care to argue that I should have inserted a comma after "use of commas" there?), but the usage I rail against, common among American writers, is the "Airplane!" comma at the end of a sentence ("It's a different kind of flying, altogether"). In the film it had the assembled company chorusing "It's a different kind of flying!" which is, er, what that comma seems to be prompting. I could have inserted one in the above to provide a second example: "Would anyone care to argue that I should have inserted a comma after 'use of commas,' there? "

[hans]

Steve, I would have cut your second sentence into three sentences, and insert a comma before the first "but". But then German is my first language, and we Germans like neat structuring, and my knowledge of what is allowed in English is poor. There seems to be more allowances than in German, apart from the German custom to string nouns together to form new ones. I argue that a comma before the first subsentence would aid understanding of the whole sentence. Anything aiding a better understanding cannot be bad, especially on this international forum!

(and the second example sounds plain daft, to me)

[benhall.1]

The 's derivation from his is a myth. The old english genitive varied, but in the commonest declensions was something like ~es or ~as. They're what collapsed into 's. There was never a period in which the common genitive marker was noun + his. In other words, the S was already there; it goes all the way back to proto-germanic. The mystery is why the new grapheme (apostrophe) was applied to disambiguate one kind of noun + S from another, but we can see the same process at work in the way people have adapted to the loss of periods in initials (TV instead of T.V.) and the need to create upper-case plurals (TVS vs TV'S) by tossing in an apostrophe. Call it a linguistic change created by advertising.

Ah well, I got the gist that the apostrophe was to indicate a missing letter or letters somewhere, at any rate. Interesting to know about the "his" being a myth. I shall have to go to my OED later and get the low-down. And this "factitious" use of the apostrophe in "it's". Doesn't "factitious" mean sham, fake, made up ... ? Something along those lines? Which I would tend to read as "wrong".

[SteveShaw]

Steve, I would have cut your second sentence into three sentences, and insert a comma before the first "but". But then German is my first language, and we Germans like neat structuring, and my knowledge of what is allowed in English is poor. There seems to be more allowances than in German, apart from the German custom to string nouns together to form new ones. I argue that a comma before the first subsentence would aid understanding of the whole sentence. Anything aiding a better understanding cannot be bad, especially on this international forum!

I sort of decided a long time ago to let my sentences reflect my flow of thinking. If I stop to put in a comma (or take a breath) I might forget what I was about to say next... I suppose it's all about not giving the reader too much mental processing to do. Could be guilty of that at times...

(and the second example sounds plain daft, to me)

Perfect example! Much better than my two.

[SteveShaw]

Heheh. I was just looking at a harmonica thread on Mudcat a minute ago and saw this:

You have to reassemble the harmonica after the cleaning.. or it simply won't play well, at all.

[I.D.10-t]

Here is an oldie...

Aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

[dwest]

Here is an oldie...

Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Unfortunately there are those of us who see the above as "Ti is buc sea the hua id deos not ed ey teer by lef, but the rod as a lo he."