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Indeed, I understand that fully. My point is that the English language is not prescriptive in practice. In fact, even if you're a prescriptivist, you could easily argue that "its" is a special case, since most English possessives are formed with apostrophe s.



Please stop making excuses for illiteracy. It's nonsense like this that contributes to the decline of educational standards.


If its versus it's implied someone is illiterate, we'd all be completely uneducated because we didn't write in Middle English.


It's not an excuse for illiteracy. Language trends change over time, including among highly educated people.


In this case, I don't think the highly-educated are intentionally using "it's" instead of "its". It's merely a common typo.


Not yet, no. I only said the trend appears to be changing.


Its rediculous but I think we're going to loose this battle


There, they're, their.

It'll be OK.


*were


It isn't a special case. (its : his) :: (it's : he's)

So you don't say "it's" for the same reason you don't say "hi's".




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