"greengrocer's apostrophe" (was Re: Cam(pb)ell)
Bob Haas
highbob at MINDSPRING.COM
Fri Aug 4 18:30:36 UTC 2000
It's an important question. The answer:
IT'S's
No problem.
bob
> From: Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2000 10:45:24 -0700
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: "greengrocer's apostrophe" (was Re: Cam(pb)ell)
>
> possessive IT'S is entirely a different matter from the ordinary
> greengrocer's apostrophe examples. this spelling is so heavily
> determined by very general principles of english spelling that even
> careful writers who would never in their lives commit a greengrocer's
> apostrophe still produce a certain number of possessive IT'Ses [yes, i
> only did that to annoy; but how *should* i spell it?].
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