'childrens' is 'more correct' because it makes the most grammatical sense.
Since it's genitiv, why would you apostrophe it, add another character for what reason? Whose ball is it? The dogs ball. Whose exhaust is it? It's the rockets exhaust. The apostrophe is used to mark silent letters inbetween the slew of two words. It is -> It's ~ It(i)s.
I've often wondered why the apostrophe causes so much trouble, sometimes I think the mistake is made deliberately to seek attention (like the sign in the article). I say this because I was always way down low near the bottom of the list when they handed out the English marks at school. Thus, if anything I should be among those who keep putting it in the wrong place!
That said, I often mistype its and it's when I mean vice versa, and occasionally its' but I usually pick them up on a proofing of what I've written. Occasionally, I miss one that I've posted online and I'm quite mortified if I am unable to correct it. (It's important to use the apostrophe correctly because its misuse distracts readers from the text they're reading.)
I can even remember the day in primary school when we were taught how to use the apostrophe. The day was unusually pleasant and we had our lesson outside in the playground. The teacher taught us what I think has to be one of the simplest rules in English grammar and that's the use of the possessive apostrophe, which is to just ask the question who or what owns something, and that's where you place it.
A single boy owns a book, so it's the boy's book; multiple boys own a boat so it's the boys' boat. Pretty simple really.
Its and it's is a bit more confusing but if you've forgotten the rules all you do is to see if you can substitute it is.
For me, the most grating misuse of the apostrophe is when it is used to indicate plural such as I have many orange's. Some rules are a bit confusing and some have changed over time but they're few and far between. For example, there's an old building of Victorian vintage in a town near me that's called Kiss's Building, today we'd shorten that to Kiss' Building.
So what gives? Why do so many people find the apostrophe so difficult?
"Its" is a possessive pronoun like his/her/their/our/whose. "It's" is a contraction of "it is", hence the apostrophe. Any time you could grammatically say his/her/their, you should use the version without the apostrophe. Any time you could say "it is", you should use the version with.
If you can't substitute it for "it is" without it sounding weird, then you don't need the apostrophe. It was hard for me too when dealing with possessive words which usually have the apostrophe.
I think “it’s” is confusing because adding apostrophe-s to a noun is normally how you make a noun possessive, so it can seem logical to do the same to the word ‘it’.
To be fair, in most other nouns, adding an apostrophe and an s at the end can both be short for "is" and signify the possessive form (e.g., "Tim's a jerk" means "Tim is a jerk," but "Tim's house" means the house Tim lives in).
By analogy, it makes sense for "it's" to both mean the possessive form and to be short for "it is," but instead we spell the possessive form as "its." Since the difference is only in writing, not pronunciation, it makes sense for a native speaker to forget it.
I see the same mistake with "who's" and "whose." The latter is the possessive form (e.g. "Whose phone is this?") and the former is a contraction of "who is" (e.g., "The only kid who's sitting quietly"). I see people write "who's" instead of "whose," for probably the same reason, since relative pronouns also replace normal nouns. Here's a comparison with the word order changed to make it obvious ("who" replaces "Mom" here):
This phone is Mom's.
This phone is who's/whose?
I know the normal word order is "Whose phone is this?" though.
> "It's" is a contraction for "it is". No apostrophe is needed.
No. "Its" is a possessive, which puts it in the same class as words like "his" and "hers". If it were a contraction for "it is" then you'd definitely need the apostrophe.
That's because "Tom's" is possessive in this case. The possessive form of "it" is "its" (no apostrophe). The way I remember it: if you can substitute "his" or "hers" for "its", then don't use an apostrophe.
Thanks for the correction. You know, I was once taught, quite poorly, that the apostrophe is used for possession, and when I'm not mindful about it, my brain makes this jump that when referring to something that "belongs" to whatever "it" refers to, that it therefore possesses this thing and therefore should have an apostrophe.
If I think about writing, I write its, but when I'm thinking what I want to write and my fingers just type it, it is like a layer of execution intercepts that thought and correct it.
I guess that's just the brain and one of its features, it's nuts.
Getting back to the subject, this is one of the biggest issues, idiots who hold our data and yet don't add salts to their encryption because salt is bad for you.
You have written “it’s” instead of “its” on the last two occurrences of the word. It should be without the apostrophe, as it’s indicating possession. I used to get this wrong all the time too.
It's simple you use 's in "it's" ="it is" to mark the missing 'i' and you use the 's in eg. "the writer's article" to mark a missing 'e' from "writeres" the original possessive which disappeared sometime in late Saxon (6th century)
Although "its" is also possessive you don't use an apostrophe because that would confuse its with "it's"
Then if the word ends in an s the rules are different unless it's a name, then the rules are different again, unless it's a biblical name then the rules are different to the last rule, except for Moses and Jesus which are exceptions to this. Then of course there are always a few special cases - St James' park (footbal ground) but St James's park (park)
Of course if the word originally comes from another language then you have to use the rules from the language instead, well sometimes, say for French but not German or Dutch, actually only sometimes for Dutch depending.
You are correct, in the case of "it's" the apostrophe doesn't indicate possession, but rather a contraction of 'it is'. I think it is a confusing edge case, which English has many of.
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