From owner-freebsd-doc Sun Oct 14 16:43:35 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from bazooka.trit.org (bazooka.trit.org [63.198.170.138]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 33E7337B40A for ; Sun, 14 Oct 2001 16:43:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: by bazooka.trit.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 3124D3E01; Sun, 14 Oct 2001 23:43:20 +0000 (UTC) Received: from bazooka (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by bazooka.trit.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2CEBF3C130; Sun, 14 Oct 2001 23:43:20 +0000 (UTC) To: Giorgos Keramidas Cc: doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: "it is" versus "it's" versus "its" In-Reply-To: <20011014231830.A59462@hades.hell.gr>; from charon@labs.gr on "Sun, 14 Oct 2001 23:18:30 +0300" Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2001 23:43:15 +0000 From: Dima Dorfman Message-Id: <20011014234320.3124D3E01@bazooka.trit.org> Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Giorgos Keramidas wrote: > In en_US.ISO8859-7/articles/diskless-x/article.sgml, I can read: > > 4 $FreeBSD: doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/diskless-x/article.sgml,v > 1.5 2001/07/06 13:02:54 dd Exp $ > ... > 229 > 230 ip=199.246.76.2 > 231 tells the client what it's IP address is. > 232 > > I think I do not like that ``it's IP address'' part, but what do you > native speakers of English think is the correct way of writing this? > > + its IP address? > + its' IP address? > > Or is it correct as it is, and it's only me being anal retentive? > I think I have read somewhere that the first form is correct for > indicating `possession', but I can not remember where and when! "its" is the possessive form of "it"; "it's" is the contraction of "it is". Thus, in the above, s/it's/its/ is appropriate. Also note that using contractions in documentation is somewhat discouraged since it can be harder to understand for non-native English speakers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message