Abusing Slow News Days: Common Mistakes in English
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 18th Mar 2010 19:05 UTC
Features, Office Since everybody in the technology world is apparently having a vacation, and nobody told me about it, we're kind of low on news. As such, this seems like the perfect opportunity to gripe about something I've always wanted to gripe about: a number of common mistakes in English writing in the comments section. I'll also throw in some tidbits about my native language, Dutch, so you can compare and contrast between the two.
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its
by tyrel on Thu 18th Mar 2010 19:58 UTC
tyrel
Member since:
2009-04-03

"Its" is not the only possessive word in English that doesn't have an apostrophe. The others are "his" and "hers". You wouldn't write "hi's" and "her's" (although I have seen the latter, unfortunately).

Also, when did "Internet" stop getting capitalized, "e-mail" lose its hyphen, and "web site" get combined into a single word?

Grammatical and spelling errors irritate the heck out of me, although I must admit that I am often stuck in the "loose" vs "lose" confusion myself.

One other thing that annoys me quite a bit is total lack of punctuation and capitalization, even between sentences: "omg my dog puked all over its gross he is locked outside now i cant believe it"

Reply Score: 1

RE: its
by StephenBeDoper on Fri 19th Mar 2010 00:46 in reply to "its"
StephenBeDoper Member since:
2005-07-06

Also, when did [...] "e-mail" lose its hyphen


I've never understood the reasons for hyphenating "e-mail" - since it's an abbreviation of "electronic mail," wouldn't "e. mail" make more sense?

Then again, I've written "EMail" for as long as I can remember without understanding the rationale for that spelling either.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[2]: its
by renhoek on Sat 20th Mar 2010 17:05 in reply to "RE: its"
renhoek Member since:
2007-04-29

Email is english, e-mail is dutch ;) . Its because "email" is already an word in dutch. So email didn't loose it's hyphen, it was never their.

Also, i was really expecting the XKCD comic here : http://xkcd.com/326/

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE: its
by boldingd on Fri 19th Mar 2010 20:48 in reply to "its"
boldingd Member since:
2009-02-19

I have been told that, originally, the possessive was formed with "his" (and maybe "hers" and "its"?), as, for example, "Bob his Computer" to indicate a computer that Bob owned. Over time, that intervening "his" was replaced by a contraction, formed by putting an "'s" on the end of the possessing noun.

Which would be why "his," "hers" and "its" are special, I suppose: they're the words that that apostrophe-S is a contraction of.

Reply Parent Score: 2