this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2025
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Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.

Example:

In America, recently came across "back-petal", instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes".

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 23 hours ago (10 children)

"Its"

As "its" is used to indicate possession by "it", "its" is an exception to apostrophe-s construction as used to indicate possessive forms.

"It's", used as either the contractive form or the possessive form, does not require such an exception. The distinction between the contractive and possessive forms of "it's" rarely/never introduces ambiguity; the distinction is clear from context.

The word "its" should be deprecated.

[–] JubilantJaguar 3 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

I have a much better plan: deprecate the stupid apostrophe for all possessives! It always looks semi-illiterate to me, like the 15th-century Dutch printsetters weren't hot on English grammar (not sure, but I bet this is in fact how it happened - German possessives manage fine without the apostrophe).

[–] BenLeMan 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

In other news, the possessive apostrophe is now allowed as part of a name (Rita's Restaurant) in German...

[–] JubilantJaguar 2 points 11 hours ago

Yes I heard about that! The illogical abomination that is English spelling and grammar is going to destroy the world's languages one by one!

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