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[mj_romo]

In 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th grades, Srs. Bernadette, Dolorosa and Christina taught that when using "its" as a possessive, it required the aspotrophe at the end of the "s".

Now, I went through many, many years of school - including 2 B.A.s and the majority of my M.A. before one member of my thesis panel told me it was incorrect.  (Oddly enough, he had never corrected it in other papers that I'd submitted to him - but then, he wasn't really known for actually reading our work.)  The other two members then jumped in and added their vociferous corrections as well, though I doubt they'd noticed it prior.

I explained about the lessons from the nuns, and they dismissed it as crazy.  So, I stopped using the apostrophe.

Yesterday, I got an email from a student begging admittance to one of my Spring classes.  He clearly did his work because he refers to one of the novels we're using and comments on it by writing, "Its' boundaries are limited only by....b.s. b.s. b.s. etc."

I emailed him back and asked about the use of "its'" and he said that the nuns told him that's how a possessive worked.


So, I'm curious - has anyone else come across this?  Or were the nuns crazy?

[oseph]

All I can say is that you all must have fallen into some crazy order of nuns with a hierarchy so rigid that when Mother Superior (mistakenly) decreed that the possessive its required an apostrophe, Sisters & Co. followed suit unquestioningly.  Nuns usually know that stuff backwards and forwards.

[mended_drum]

Crazy nuns.   Its is the singular possessive; it's is a contraction for it is.  its' would be the plural possessive which, in English, is their.

[scampster]

My nuns never taught me its'. So I agree with oseph that you all must be in some weird order, the Sisters of Punctuating However We Like.

[magistra]

What helped me learn the difference is that "its" is like "his" -- the s on the end show possession.

[barred_owl]

I think those nuns' wimples were too tight.  There is no apostrophe after the 's' in its.

[caravaggiojr82]

Crazy nuns.   Its is the singular possessive; it's is a contraction for it is.  its' would be the plural possessive which, in English, is their.

Precisely.

[kaysixteen]

Obedience brings victory, and victory is life.

[european]

"I will believe that the white that I see is black if the hierarchical Church so defines it", an affiliate of theirs might have said.

[melba_frilkins]

Its' is (its' ')  a secret code to identify those of you who were indoctrinated into a secret society. You should use its' in all correspondence. Then when it is time to unite and unleash your collective super powers, you'll be able to find each other.

[betty_p]

Remember the Kliban cartoon, El Cuaderno de la Virgen? So that's what she had written down in there. Our Lady of Imperfect Punctuation.

Did they also instruct you to write " his' "?   :)

[systeme_d_]

The nuns that educated me would have smacked me with a ruler (if I were nearby) or poked me with a rubber-tipped pointer (if I were several feet away) if I were to use an apostrophe in the manner the OP describes.

If I did this today, even though I am now several states away from those nuns, they would probably get in their station wagon and make the long drive just to deliver the smackdown.

[yellowtractor]

I've never knowingly seen a nun.

I have, however, seen more than my share of its/it's/its' errors, I'm sorry to say.

[merce]

I've never knowingly seen a nun....

Whaaa?


You have never seen a female religious of the R.C. church?

For real? Is this a trick?

Really?


(And honestly, I do feel like I have a vague memory of that weird "its' " from my education with the nuns who also said one should always say "his or her" and never "their" for an ungenderified third person.  That has to be a false memory though. It just has to be.)

[yellowtractor]

For real.  I grew up in the mid-South.  We didn't have nuns.  Come to think of it, we hardly had Roman Catholics.

Of course, since Vatican II most of them are undercover.  Nuns, I mean.  Hence "knowingly."