He's missing this one
Fill in the gap: a) it's b) its
"The hacker got access to the server and killed ... processes"
lolz
Fill in the gap: a) it's b) its
"The hacker got access to the server and killed ... processes"
lolz
^You make nouns possessive by adding a saxon genitive to signify the distinct possessive-izing "s" sound. The word "it" is also made possessive with this same sound when spoken, but for the sake of a contraction (read: abomination ;)), we have decided to arbitrarily remove the saxon genitive and replace it with a simple "s". The excuse for this inconsistency is "well it is a pronoun, not a noun, so this is not an inconsistency" does not take into account that English is a language primarily spoken. Written English, where reasonably possible, should approximate the spoken constructs.
Demonstration:
He stepped on the cat*'*s tail.
He stepped on its tail.
At the very least, people who use saxon genitives with the word "it" do not deserve the ridicule people like to heap on them. "it's"/"its" is not a "there"/"their"/"they're" scenario.
First, we weren't alive back when "it's" was used this way. Nobody currently alive was. There's no argument of "they're doing it the old way", because it's not even in living memory. As of the current standards, and those of the past 200 years, they are simply doing it the wrong way.
Second, it can't even be argued that they are confused because of the old way. Nobody accidentally writes her's, their's or your's. The reason people write it's is nothing to do with the possesive apostrophe, it's purely because of confusion with the "it is" contraction.
I object to the assertion that people are accidentally inserting "it is" where they mean possessive "it". Certainly people such as myself who are strongly verbally oriented type the saxon genitive reflexively to reflect the spoken possessive-ization construct. In a similar way, I also very commonly "improperly" insert commas in my sentence to signify pauses instead of using them merely syntactically.
Furthermore, I maintain that "its"/"it's" is not equivalent to "they're"/"their"/"there". The difference between the first is purely convention, while the second set of words are only related to each other incidentally.
"Nobody accidentally writes her's, their's or your's."
Actually, I do quite often.
`The cat stepped on his foot.`
`The cat stepped on its foot.`
Still, I don't get annoyed at its/it's because it's such an easy mistake to make. I still do it occasionally without meaning to. I don't quite get how people consistently get their/there/they're or loose/lose wrong, but that's just me.