To the editor,
As a retired English teacher, I am regularly dismayed at the misusage of some words.
Many people use pronouns incorrectly (“He gave it to Jim and I” or “Her and I are good friends”) but the most common mistake is assuming that the possessive form of “it” is “it’s,” easy enough to confuse, as possessive nouns use the apostrophe: John’s, etc.
However, pronouns don’t use apostrophes for possession: my, mine; your, yours; his, his; her, hers; our, ours; it, its.
The use of an apostrophe makes it a contraction of “it is.” Since I have seen teachers, principals and even journalists make this mistake, it seems evident that few know when to use the apostrophe.
Then again, it could have just been a typo.
Petrina Gregson,
Clearwater, B.C.
newsroom@clearwatertimes.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter