Discovering Allison Stieger’s writings and enthusiastic sharing of myth is a pleasure for me, a retired longtime college prof of myth, a person steeped and steeping forever in its currents and undertows. But i have a petty complaint. To squawk on … The Trickster (surely NOT in the guise of Raven, though!) has been up to no good in the grammatical world lately, and has tweaked my professorial wrinkles just now re admirable Allison Stieger’s mis-usage. Drat, even she has fallen prey to using “it’s” as a possessive when, to be painfully pedantic, it isn’t.
The possessive of the PRONOUN ‘it’ is ITS, just as the possessive of the pronouns ‘He/Him’ is HIS — no apostrophe in possessive pronouns (yet)! So “it’s” with an apostrophe always stands for ‘it is’. Yup, the apostrophe represents the missing letter ‘i’ in proper usage. Prob’ly, as with other creeping common errors, the mistake will eventually become proper too. It still rots this ol’ lady’s socks, however. Maybe the Trickster should be toe-tugged for this misleading of otherwise educated folk?!
Just sayin’, its a shame that it’s now such a common slip-up in high places to write IT’S for ITS.
Unfortunately, this error did make it through both my own editing process and past the good folks at the Campbell Foundation. Abject apologies!
Mark
on December 16, 2013 at 1:17 pm
Damn those typos – just as well I’m not the grammatical nazi my friend is – still, interesting article and as someone trying to edit and finish a novel using Raven (albeit related more to Tlingit rather than Haida) as a modern Hero myth (ok if that is true if it’s based in the 1960s) – I appreciate your story Allison
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Discovering Allison Stieger’s writings and enthusiastic sharing of myth is a pleasure for me, a retired longtime college prof of myth, a person steeped and steeping forever in its currents and undertows. But i have a petty complaint. To squawk on … The Trickster (surely NOT in the guise of Raven, though!) has been up to no good in the grammatical world lately, and has tweaked my professorial wrinkles just now re admirable Allison Stieger’s mis-usage. Drat, even she has fallen prey to using “it’s” as a possessive when, to be painfully pedantic, it isn’t.
The possessive of the PRONOUN ‘it’ is ITS, just as the possessive of the pronouns ‘He/Him’ is HIS — no apostrophe in possessive pronouns (yet)! So “it’s” with an apostrophe always stands for ‘it is’. Yup, the apostrophe represents the missing letter ‘i’ in proper usage. Prob’ly, as with other creeping common errors, the mistake will eventually become proper too. It still rots this ol’ lady’s socks, however. Maybe the Trickster should be toe-tugged for this misleading of otherwise educated folk?!
Just sayin’, its a shame that it’s now such a common slip-up in high places to write IT’S for ITS.
Unfortunately, this error did make it through both my own editing process and past the good folks at the Campbell Foundation. Abject apologies!
Damn those typos – just as well I’m not the grammatical nazi my friend is – still, interesting article and as someone trying to edit and finish a novel using Raven (albeit related more to Tlingit rather than Haida) as a modern Hero myth (ok if that is true if it’s based in the 1960s) – I appreciate your story Allison