It's not its job to teach you how to spell

The miracle of pine trees, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2008

At the risk of sounding terribly peevish and perhaps to position myself too far on the anal side of the oral/anal dichotomy, I have been noticing a lot of typos recently on web sites and blogs I encounter.

Far and away the single most common misspelling - and really, it's almost a word misusage rather than a spelling error - is the confusion that seems to exist between the contraction, 'it's' - short for it is - and the singular possessive of the personal pronoun it (as in he, she, it) - which is spelled 'its'.

Many years ago, I concluded there were two types of bad spellers in this world. The first is the person who just doesn't really relate to language all that well - or at least, not to its written form. Keenly aware that their intelligence is, to some extent, being judged by the quality of the written work they produce and that they are not what you could call 'linguistic naturals,' these folks always ask someone else to proof their work, keep a dictionary at hand, and actually do something to compensate for what they perceive as a handicap.

Then there are what I have always thought of as the arrogant misspellers, and I think this is what I'm encountering in a lot of web copy these days. These are the folks who do have an affinity for written language and they are probably also readers. They don't have an actual learning disability and they aren't intimidated by the written word. In my experience, these are the folks to watch out for. An early facility with language has made them horribly arrogant. They never spell check anything. They don't own a dictionary, and they think you're kinda stodgy for consulting one from time to time. With the advent of spell check, they've rested their case. The fact that spell check isn't going to tell you that you've typed 'change' instead of 'chance' doesn't bother them a bit. I don't blame anyone for not using grammar check when copy writing - it has an almost mediaeval approach to sentence fragments that would drive anyone who can actually type - or write - nuts.

However, the grammar check would help those who seriously do not know the difference between the contraction it's and the possessive of the personal pronoun it. Which is its. There is no apostrophe. And it is so easy to check this on your own. Just ask yourself, could I substitute 'it is' here? If the answer is no, remove the apostrophe immediately. If not sooner. And step away from the writing instrument. At least for a little while.

I will not name names. I know that the blogging platform in particular doesn't lend itself to mid-post course correction - it's very frustrating to write a post in Word and then have to reformat everything, adding the italics for the book and movie titles all over again, perhaps a little bit of bold here and there for emphasis, formatting the links. None of these things is particularly creative or inspiring, and perhaps they're antithetical to the creative process. But when I see 'it's' used incorrectly 14 times on the same page, please don't expect me to believe that you know better and just didn't grammar check your copy. You obviously don't know any better. But if you're reading this post, you no longer have any excuse. And if you'd learned this rule back in grade three when it was first taught, you wouldn't be having a problem with it now. Would ja?

For a list of the 100 words most often spelled incorrectly in the English language, click here.