It’s “its” not “it’s”
I’m sorry if this makes me sound like a grammar snob, but I’m overwhelmed with how many bloggers who make a full-time living off of blogging don’t understand simple grammatical rules. I know that I have my share of typos and grammar errors, but I’m talking about the kind of things that are repeated so much that I’m not quite sure that the blogger even knows the grammatical rule in question.
As recent surveys show, most blog readers are well-educated, and every time you do something like this, it catches on a person’s eyes, causing him or her to stop reading for a brief moment and interrupting the reading flow. I think it’s reasonable to ask a blogger who makes a full-time living off his blog to take a day to read William Strunk’s Elements of Style. I’m not asking for that blogger to catch every typo, every misplaced modifier. I’m not asking that you don’t end on a preposition (these are minor offenses), but for god’s sake, whenever you want to use ownership with the word “it,” it’s “its,” not “it’s.” (as you’ll notice, I placed all punctuation within the quotes, another thing that bloggers neglect to do) In this post, Darren makes the same mistake twice in one paragraph:
Every niche has it’s jargon and buzzwords but I’m constantly reminded (by emails from readers asking me to explain what I mean when I use them) that quite often the people who read blogs and the people who write them live in different worlds. Lots of people accuse the Web 2.0 niche of this but I’d argue that every niche has it’s buzzwords that you should think twice about using.
Both times, the mistake caused a bump in my reading. C’mon, I’m not asking you guys to hire full-time copyeditors, but at least take the time to learn the basic rules. I’m talking to you too.
Related posts: Blog Highlights: Sadly, No!
I know this rule intimately and I STILL find myself doing it wrong a couple of times a week. I almost always catch it as I’m doing it, but I tend to be more forgiving of the times I see it in other people’s work.
I make this distinction at the very beginning of my classes each semester.
Re: Elliot
Yeah, as long as you know the rule, it’s ok. It’s just that for some pro bloggers out there, it’s very obvious that they don’t know the rule. And if we want people to take blogs seriously, we have to write professionally.
Re: Jason
Yeah, one of my profs went off on a grammar rant once. And what’s worse, it was like a 300 level course.