It's Pissing Me Off

Eats, Shoots & Leaves, The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss should be required reading in every school system that claims to teach English.

Words can be misspelled in a sentence without losing your meaning. The ability to read "typo" is a vital skill, and we all forgive it when we encounter it. Typographical errors have become even more prevalent in this day of instant messaging when the "send" key is pressed before the error is noticed by the sender. Both Diana and I have a zero tolerance policy on typos in our own writing, and even we are still afflicted at times. We've even been known to post something on someone's Facebook wall, subsequently delete it, and repost the same message with corrections. Nonetheless, a typo usually doesn't prevent the message from getting through, although there are a few words you should stay away from just in case the Gods of Literacy decide to fuck with you at the wrong moment. For example, if you're dashing off a quick sales message to a customer asking them to peruse your "extensive" line of wares, don't forget that only one letter keeps you from admitting that your goods are "expensive".

Punctuation though; now therein lies the single most powerful tool in English. Forget one tiny little bit of punctuation and the entire meaning of your message is changed forever. For want of a comma your chances with the woman or man of your dreams could sit on the knife edge between endless nights of passion on the one hand and why don't you just slit your wrists and get it over with on the other.

An example of this is provided in the book I recommend at the top of this post. An English teacher goes to the chalk board and writes the words, "A woman without her man is nothing". He then asks the class to punctuate the sequence and create a sentence.

All the males in the class write, "A woman, without her man, is nothing."

All the females in the class write, "A woman: without her, man is nothing."

Now tell me you don't just want to cuddle the sweet living shit out of punctuation.

So what's pissing me off today is the common misuse of the simple little word "it's". Quite simply, it's fallen into common practice to use "it's" incorrectly and I'm (short for "I am") here to do my part in fixing what is obviously so broken that even otherwise literate people are falling afoul of it. Here we go.

First of all, everybody should know what a contraction is, but I always like to assume infinite ignorance and unlimited intelligence in my audience, so I'll explain. A contraction is a word created by combining two words or shortening a longer one. It contains elements of the original word(s) and the connection between the two elements is signified by an apostrophe. For example, "cannot" becomes "can't", "will not" becomes "won't" (although strangely not "willn't”, but I do use that one from time to time just to fuck with people - it's not illiteracy if you're doing it on purpose), "are not" becomes "aren't", "you are" becomes "you're", "it had" becomes "it'd", "we have" becomes "we've", "I will" becomes "I'll", and so on.

Contractions are used when writing in an informal style mimicking the way one would speak, and should never be used in any formal or professional correspondence. Now let's (that's short for "let us" ... and that other word is short for "that is", and I'll leave it up to you to figure out which one. Damn right "I will"!) move on to the annoyance du jour.

"It's" is a contraction for more than one word combination. "It's" can be a short form of "it is", as in, "It's my opinion that your parents should have used better birth control." "It's" can also be short for "it has", as in, "It's been years since we've seen each other, and I wish to Christ it'd been longer."

Now remember dear readers, the apostrophe is also used to signify possession, for example, it could be correctly written that, "Randy's penis is better than all the others. It's received official approval in Canada and several foreign countries including Quebec. Its rampant silhouette, photographed against a rising sun, was the cover shot on the April 2006 issue of 'Maclean's' magazine."

Now, in the first sentence, the apostrophe connecting the letter "s" to my given name specifically identifies that the penis referred to is mine. But I am a person and my penis is not. I own it, not the other way around, no matter what your mother may have told you. Keep this in mind as we proceed because it's important.

In the second sentence, we see that it; i. e., my penis; HAS received official approval. Hence, "it's" means "it has" in this case.

Now let’s take a LONG, HARD look at the third and last sentence where you’ll notice that, “Its silhouette …” contains no apostrophe. That’s (meaning “that is”) right. Take a moment to absorb this. When referring to characteristics, accessories, appurtenances, or any other aspect of any entity including, but not limited to a penis, a tree, a car, a country, or a planet; anything you are referring to as “it”, leave the fucking apostrophe OFF.

So here you are; feeling better educated after reading about my penis.