Grammar at the Constitution Center

The Ancient Rome and America exhibit at the Constitution Center ends on August 1, so we headed into the city on Sunday morning to see it before it was too late. The artifacts ranged from a ring worn by Caesar Augustus to modern reproductions of busts of famous Romans. The exhibit ended with a video contemplating the fall of Rome and whether America will share Rome's fate. If a failure to use proper grammar is any indication, maybe America is doomed.

Sometimes a grammar problem is only evident in print. The difference between "it's" and "its" is a case in point. In the subtitles of the brief video, the producers used the two words interchangeably; however there is a difference between the two. "It's" is a contraction of the two words "it is." For example, "It's (it is) my party, and I'll cry if I want to." "Its" is a possessive pronoun. In other words, it is used to show ownership by an inanimate object. For example, "Don't judge a book by its cover."

Why do so many people have problems with these two tiny words? I think it is because there are two uses for the apostrophe:

1. The apostrophe is used to indicate missing letters in a contraction. Could have= could've

2. The apostrophe is used to show possession. The book that belongs to Barbara=Barbara's book

When a writer has to decide between "it's" and "its," these two rules seem to collide. But they don't really. Look at the other possessive pronouns:

I=my (I brought my book to the beach.)

You=your (or yours) (You watched your money grow in your retirement account.)

He=his (He played his guitar at the coffee house.)

She=her (or hers) (She kicked her soccer ball in the park.)

We=our (We finished our dinner with homemade gelato.)

They=their (They drove their car across the state.)

Notice that none of the possessive pronouns uses an apostrophe! If you remember that none of the other pronouns uses an apostrophe to form its possessive, you'll never make this mistake of usage.

And you can save America from its (not it's!) decline and fall.