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Comment by chrisweekly | Hacker News Reader

it's (it is) -> its (belongs to it)

I'm not trying to be pedantic, but they're different words, and (esp. considering how capable our community is when it comes to logic and precision with programming languages) I find it strange how often this "it's / its" error is repeated. Calling it out in hopes of helping others get it right.

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There's nothing strange about how often this error is repeated. It is a fault in the "design" of the English language, which violates its own rules, insofar as it has any. Apostrophes are used for both possessives and contractions, eg. "That's John's ball". Indeed possessive "it's" was historically written with the apostrophe. That the apostrophe was dropped to become possessive "its" is completely arbitrary special-case logic, and given that there is no logic behind which it was dropped from, it is easily subject to confusion because you cannot reason about which is which if you forget in the moment.

Indeed, it's pretty much the opposite of "logic and precision"

Indeed nothing. Of course the English language is rife with logical inconsistencies; you're attempting to double down on a strawman argument.

Reread my comment and you may notice that "logic and precision" referred to capabilities of the people in the HN community, not characteristics of the English language. Of course (as demonstrated in this very thread), that capability is not evenly distributed.

Thanks for your response. You raise an interesting point, but I take a different view. Contractions _always_ use an apostrophe, while possessives only sometimes do [they're / their, you're / your, he's / his, she's / her, it's / its, ...]. For "it", the apostrophe alone serves to distinguish between the two words.

> Contractions _always_ use an apostrophe

Are you really gonna say that? Are you sure you don't wanna reconsider? That's kinda sorta not true, I've gotta say, especially what with Halloween coming up soon.

> For "it", the apostrophe alone serves to distinguish between the two words.

Sure, but that doesn't establish which to drop it from. English coulda just as well dropped it from the contraction.

No, "gonna, wanna, kinda, sorta, coulda" don't count.

Sorry everyone, I didn't mean to feed the trolls.

I really don't think it's an issue with how the language is structured. I think it's more an issue of posters using mobile devices and not spending a lot of time copyediting their comments. It surprises me how many users on here shamelessly post mobile-subdomain links, rather than the desktop ones that only redirect to mobile if you're on a phone.

"its" is precisely parallel to "hers" though?

Depends on the usage.

- Its favorite color is blue. The ball is its

- Her favorite color is blue. The ball is hers

Which - just adds to the inconsistency.

was this discussion not about apostrophes? but yes, different sets of pronouns work differently. more to the point, those different ways are not confusingly akin to contractions.

Anecdotally, 'its' sans apostrophe will be automatically "corrected" by my phone.

On the bright side, this has finally given me the push to disable auto-correction.

Yikes.

And right on about disabling auto-correction.

Yea, I think I kind of know this in theory, but tend to mix them up sometimes as a non-native English speaker. Good to try to iron out those common mistakes though for sure.

You’re wrong. It’s can mean either. Both are correct.

I’m trying to be pedantic and calling this out in the hopes of helping you get it right.

I can't tell whether you're serious. "It's" is not a possessive. Using it as one is incorrect.

Wrong.

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