One of the deeper mysteries of english grammar for me is the use of commas to set off phrases. In general, I place commas around phrases more out of instinct than absolute certainty.
Here's an article on commas, clauses, and phrases:
I'll write more later.
Ed Abbott
Possessives cause me trouble. There's
all these funny little rules. For example,
its versus it's.
Leave the apostrophe off if it owns something.
For example, it will happen in its own way
is the grammatically correct way to say it owns
something.
However, if you say, it's going to happen in
its own time, you put the apostrophe in the
first instance, but leave it out of the second.
The first form of it's is really saying, it is.
The second form of its is saying, in effect, it
owns something.
For me, this grammer rule summarizes as:
I know this is an odd approach to the
grammatical problem of it's someone
else's problem. Here's why I'm taking
this approach:
I have this funny instinct to want to leave
off the apostrophe on the word else's
in the same way that I would leave it off on
the word its.
It's my instinct for consistency and order.
Since else and it are very generic
words, it seems to me that tf I leave the
apostrophe off one, I should leave it off the
other. I'm wrong. My instinct is wrong.
Here's how Wikipedia deals with someone
else's problem:
As you can see, Wikipedia puts an apostrophe
followed by the letter S on the word else.
Else becomes else's. It seems like that's
how everyone does it.
The lesson? First instincts are not always
correct.
Ed Abbott
