Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/01/29

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Subject: RE: [Leica] OT - how to spell 'lens'
From: Jem Kime <jem.kime@cwcom.net>
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 09:18:37 -0000

Ray,
I'm with you on this grammar thing, and no, for the most part, it does not 
get taught at school these days, though this is nothing recent as I wasn't 
taught most of it when I was young and I'm 44 now.
We made it to the age of 13-14 when in our Latin class, our head (who was 
very 'old school') became astonished that so many of the class had no idea 
what an 'indefinite article' was, how the 'third declension' was formed, 
and figured a 'gerund' was something they might meet at a zoo!

But to be specific about 'it's / its', I can sympathise with those who feel 
confused as the dismisssing of the apostrophe is counter to its use in the 
normal possessive sense.
I.e., 'The roof's water', becomes 'its water' when we refer to the roof as 
'it'. The sense of the water belonging to something has not changed, merely 
the substitution of the word 'roof' with 'it'.

I could go on about 'your' and 'you're', 'there' and 'their' but I'll stop 
before my rant becomes boring, sorry is anyone still reading....?

Jem ;-)

- -----Original Message-----
From:	Ray Moth [SMTP:ray_moth@yahoo.com]

And what about the spelling of "its", often miss-spelled "it's"? I
suppose I'm being pedantic but this really irritates me. "Its" denotes
possession; "it's" is an abbreviation of "it is".  For example: "It's
time the dog ate its food."  "That house lets in water through its roof
whan it's raining."

End of rant. I feel better now :-)

Regards,

Ray