When to Use Its Versus It's

 This writing tip may seem very elementary, my friends. If you've got this down pat, good for you. Just skim this email or delete it and pat yourself on the back. For those who aren't 100% sure, don't beat yourself up. I've edited hundreds of books, and I see people making this mistake every day of the week.

Today we are talking about it's, its, and its’. I know, it seems very simplistic, but bear with me. It's is a contraction. We use an apostrophe to merge the word it with the verb is, and we get it’s. Here's how we use it: "It's raining out today." Or “Jean-Pierre wants to go to the movies, but it's too late." So we have it's as a stand-in for it is.

Its is a pronoun. It's gender-neutral. Here's how we use it: "The dog wagged its tail." Now, if that's your dog, or if you are close enough to the dog to see the gender, you could use his or her, but if we don't know the gender, or if the object is nonhuman, we say it and use its (e.g., "The cabin was appealing with its cozy exterior.")

Its' is not a word. Just trying to see if you're awake!

Be careful with spell check in Microsoft Word. Spell check will almost always pick up this common mistake when we misspell the contraction; however, it will often flag "its" as incorrect when it's used properly, so it’s a good thing to memorize this rule.

The Plural Versus the Possessive

I know. This topic sounds very basic. If you think it’s beneath you, just skip this tip, but I work with dozens of authors every year. You wouldn’t believe how many of them make mistakes in terms of distinguishing between the plural and the possessive.

Singular means one; plural means more than one. If you have three kids, that’s a plural. Notice the way I spelled kids. No apostrophes anywhere.

However, if I want to talk about the music the kids listen to, then we’re talking about a possessive. The music belongs to the kids. We want to insert an apostrophe. If we have one kid, let’s call her Sarah, and we’re talking about Sarah and her music, we say, Sarah’s music. The kid’s music. That’s because Sarah is just one person. But if we are talking about a group of kids and their music, the apostrophe goes after the plural version of the word kids to form this term: the kids’ music. I know, it looks wrong, but it’s not.

Let’s look at some other examples of plurals: moms, dads, brothers, sisters,  fathers-in-law, yeses and nos, parents, teachers, Macdonalds (if I’m sitting with my sister and brother, we are the Macdonalds, no apostrophe anywhere).

And other possessives? The parents’ income, the dad’s golf game, the children’s homework, the Macdonalds’ close relationships. It’s easy to form a possessive if your noun doesn’t end in S because you simply put an apostrophe at the end of the word and then add S. But when the word already ends in S, writers often get confused and will put the apostrophe in the wrong place.

Let’s re-examine the dad’s golf game. I was talking about one dad. Singular. If I had been talking about a group of dads, I would’ve said the dads’ golf game. Sounds the same (it’s a homonym), but be careful about the placement of that apostrophe. And if you make a mistake, it’s always a good idea to spellcheck your document because spellcheck will probably pick this up. Not all the time, but often enough; however, my spellcheck tells me that my spelling of Macdonalds as a plural is wrong, so I just ignored it. Spellcheck is not always right.

Happy writing.

SM

 

Word Usage — Cultured and Cultural, Historic and Historical

Today’s writing tip is on word usage. We’re going to look at four different words that people tend to use incorrectly.

Let’s start with cultured and cultural. Cultured means sophisticated. Someone might speak French, take ballet lessons, or visit fine art museums in an effort to become more cultured. Cultural is completely different. It relates to aspects of culture, such as customs, beliefs, or traditions. I remember being very embarrassed once when I wrote a condolence letter to a high-powered lawyer I had been working with during my days of advocating on behalf of wrongly convicted men. This lawyer’s mother had passed away, and in my email, I said, among other things, that his mother had been very cultural. Wrong, Sig! She had been cultured, but you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. I had already sent the email when I realized my error, and it was out there in the world. I felt foolish.

Historic and historical are similar. They don’t mean the same thing. You don’t want to use one when you mean the other. Historic means something significant, something that may only happen once every decade or every 70 years, like Haley’s Comet. It’s unusual, unprecedented, and important. Historical relates to history or something that happened in the past. For example, Columbus discovered America in 1492, although this is debatable as to whether someone can “discover” a country that had been inhabited for thousands of years! Nonetheless, this is considered an historical fact. It can be mundane, boring, or unimportant.

My point here is that these terms are not interchangeable. You don’t want to use "cultured" when you mean "cultural," and you don’t want to use "historic" when you mean "historical," and vice versa. But don’t beat yourself up if you make a mistake. I am still berating myself 15 years later for misusing the word 'cultured,' and I need to let it go. My hotshot lawyer, David Asper, probably forgot about it 10 minutes after he read the email, but I’m still thinking of it years later.

 

 

Today's Writing Tip Is about Clichés and Origin Stories

 Clichés and Origin Stories

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

It’s raining cats and dogs.

Only time will tell.

She treated him like a dog.

The cat is out of the bag.

I slept like a baby (have you ever known a baby who slept through the night? Where did this saying come from?)

It’s interesting to look at the history of some of these clichés, particularly those about animals. Let’s start with “raining cats and dogs.” Its exact origin is uncertain, but one of the first writers to use it was Jonathan Swift in 1782. It is thought the expression originated because London, England, was very rainy, and in many old European cities, animals often washed up dead in the streets during heavy rain.

What about he treated me like a dog? Everybody I know treats their dog at least as well as they treat their children, and maybe better.  Again, this comes from Britain during the days when dogs were dirty, roamed the streets and were considered low-status. So sad and infuriating to those of us who love our animals so much!

Lastly, what about who let the cat out of the bag? Whoever put the cat in the bag in the first place? It means revealing a secret, and it dates back to Britain in the 1700s, when animals were put in bags to be transported or taunted. There is also a rumor that dishonest merchants sold cats instead of piglets. I shudder to think about it. As Steven Pinker says in all of his fabulous books, despite what people think about our current society in terms of its imperfections, there has never been a better time to be alive in all of history. This is certainly true for animals—not all but many.

As much as you possibly can, avoid clichés in your writing. Writing always involves rewriting, and when you go back to reread or rewrite your article or manuscript, be conscious of using clichés. It’s better to come up with your own lame original idea than to recycle something that’s been around for hundreds of years.

One of the few areas where I almost always make exceptions is in dialogue. If you have a particular character, and you want to give him or her a flaw or an eccentricity, talking in clichés is a good way to go.

 

Do you mind?

This appears to be a very simple question, and you would think that the vast majority of people would get it right, but if that’s your conclusion, you would be wrong.

When I’m listening to conversations, watching TV, reading or editing manuscripts, this is what I usually see:

Person A: “Do you mind if I sit down?”

Person B: “Yeah, go ahead. (Variations on this answer – “Sure. Yes.”)

WRONG!

When somebody asks if you mind, and you consent, the correct answer is “No. I don’t mind.” End of story.

However, you could say, “No problem.” “Go right ahead,” “Please do,” or something to that effect. Just don’t say yes unless you don’t want the person to sit there.

Alternate answer:

Person A: “Do you mind if I sit down?”

Person B: “Yes, I do mind. Sorry. My pet orangutan is sitting there.”

*Shout out to Cathie because I asked her this question in the car, do you mind, and she said yes when she meant no, and we both laughed.

Should Authors Use AI in Their Writing?

This is a very contentious topic. Debates rage on author forums about whether writers should use AI, particularly in its most sophisticated forms. These conversations get so heated that I’ve seen people thrown off discussion groups for being outrageously rude and saying that anybody who uses AI is not a real writer. That, of course, is nonsense.

Here are the important questions: first, will it help your writing, or will it change your voice? Second, is it ethical to use artificial intelligence in writing, particularly if you don’t disclose that fact to others? Third, should you tell people that you wrote part of your book or article with AI?

AI does change the writer’s voice, but that’s often why writers use it in the first place. They want something that sounds better than what they’ve written, and they want it to be spelled and punctuated perfectly. But if you write large portions of a book using ChatGPT or Grok, will you own that book? Amazon is facing several lawsuits from authors whose material it deemed largely AI-generated and removed from its platform. If you have written your book using a substantial amount of AI, you may not be able to copyright it, or the copyright can be violated, and the book could end up in the public domain.

What should we do? You’ll notice that I addressed whether AI would help you with writing and copyright issues, but I didn’t talk about ethics. I think that’s an individual matter. We all have to decide for ourselves when and if it is ethical to use a bot to write for us. Personally, I use various AI tools, mainly for grammar, syntax, and synonyms, and occasionally to fact-check. However, AI is not 100% accurate. It can be wrong about all kinds of things.

If you are publishing on Amazon, you need to disclose to them whether you use AI. If you are in college or university and writing essays, check school policies so you don’t get a failing grade for what you thought was a stupendous paper. Otherwise, this is a personal matter that we all have to decide for ourselves. When and how you use AI as a writer is your business.

 

Literally

 Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you can remove this word, and your writing will be much cleaner and more accurate without it. Either it’s redundant, or it’s used incorrectly.

For example, “Monica literally stayed out until 3 AM.” How different is that from saying, “Monica stayed out until 3 AM”? The word literally adds nothing to the sentence. If you want to emphasize how late Monica stayed out, you could say, "Monica actually stayed out until 3 AM" or add an exclamation mark. In this context, "literally" is used correctly, but it doesn’t add anything to the prose.

However, more often than not, the term is used incorrectly. It’s one of my pet peeves and makes me want to pull all my hair out when I see a sentence written in the first person where our protagonist says, “I literally died.” Hmm, I don’t think so. Unless you’re making that statement from the Upside Down or communicating with us through a Ouija board and you are in the realm of the dead, you did not literally die because literally means actually. You could say that you virtually died, i.e., it felt like it. That would be good. Not good for you, but it’s grammatically correct.

So, be on the lookout for the term “literally” in your writing. If it’s your vocabulary, it could easily slip into your manuscript or report and confuse readers.