{"id":435,"date":"2008-12-02T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2008-12-02T18:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/the-tool-its-self-seems\/"},"modified":"2011-05-31T19:45:37","modified_gmt":"2011-06-01T01:45:37","slug":"the-tool-its-self-seems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/12\/the-tool-its-self-seems\/","title":{"rendered":"“The tool it’s self seems …”"},"content":{"rendered":"

My wife saw this on Amazon.com.<\/p>\n

Problem:<\/strong>
\nThe reflexive pronoun is triply misspelled.<\/p>\n

Explanation:<\/strong>
\nMy wife was researching a carpentry tool on Amazon.com.<\/p>\n

She was reading comments from those who had bought the tool when she came across “The tool it’s self seems …”.<\/p>\n

The obvious solution is to replace I-T-APOSTROPHE-S-SPACE-S-E-L-F with the reflexive pronoun “itself” — spelled I-T-S-E-L-F.<\/p>\n

What fascinates me is how the commenter managed to make three spelling mistakes in the process of misspelling this pronoun.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Mistake #1 was to assume that reflexive pronouns are always formed by combining a possessive pronoun with the word “self”.<\/li>\n
  2. Mistake #2 was to assume that a space should appear between such a possessive pronoun and the word “self”.<\/li>\n
  3. Mistake #3 was to misspell the possessive pronoun “its” as I-T-APOSTROPHE-S.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Let us discuss these three mistakes in reverse order.<\/p>\n

    If we undo mistake #3, then we get “its self” — spelled I-T-S-SPACE-S-E-L-F.<\/p>\n

    If we undo mistake #2, then we get “itsself” — spelled I-T-S-S-E-L-F.<\/p>\n

    If we undo mistake #1, then we get “itself” — spelled I-T-S-E-L-F.<\/p>\n

    Solution:<\/strong>
    \n“The tool itself seems …”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    My wife saw this on Amazon.com. Problem: The reflexive pronoun is triply misspelled. Explanation: My wife was researching a carpentry tool on Amazon.com. She was reading comments from those who had bought the tool when she came across “The tool it’s self seems …”. The obvious solution is to replace I-T-APOSTROPHE-S-SPACE-S-E-L-F with the reflexive pronoun…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,23,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misspellings","category-possessives","category-pronouns"],"yoast_head":"\n"The tool it's self seems ..." - Kirk Mahoney . com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2008\/12\/the-tool-its-self-seems\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""The tool it's self seems ..." - Kirk Mahoney . com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My wife saw this on Amazon.com. 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