e2pandas

I'd like to comment upon the status of the Nominative in English, particularly the predicate nominative. Usually, in English, the Nominative and Accusative (direct object) cases are identical, except in certain situations that are very imoportant, namely situations involving pronouns. Me, you, him, her, it, us, (y'all), and them are the accusative forms of I, you, he, she, it, we, (y'all), and they. As far as I know, these are the only accustaive forms that appear on the surface in English grammar (Accusative case in English is normally dictated by word order, not inflection, especially now that are verbs are for the most part uninflected), except for of course, the reflexive forms myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves, which are different monsters altogether.

Now, in most European languages, the object of a verb of being, such as 'is' (even when it's not stated, like in Russian ja amerikanets -- I (am) (an) American), must always be in the nominative, since this is in essence a statement of equality, not having anything to do with one thing acting upon another, which would yield an object. So, in the sentence 'John is a jerk,' both of the nouns are in the nominative case, as would be any adjective describing jerk. and in languages with case inflection, such as Czech, the subject and the 'object' of the being verb are both in the nominative : Ludmila je dobrá studentka 'Ludmila is a good student', not * Ludmila je dobrou studentku. This sounds very wrong.

Now in most languages, pronouns function much like the nouns they are filling in for, and in most languages, the predicate nominative presents no obstacle to this. In Spanish, you'd sound like an idiot if you said *es mí, soy mí Or let's look at a language closer to home, such as German where a dummy subject 'it' is used at the beginning of a sentence: Es ist er, natürlich 'It is he, of course.' Now, look at how silly the English translation will look to most of you. What's going on? To a presrciptivist, of course, this is perfectly correct in every way. But does anyone else rememebr sitting in elementary school saying 'what the hell?' to this? I do.

In Modern English, it seems that it sounds more natural, perhaps in some cases more correct, to use the accusative form of the pronoun after the being verb. When you're knocking on your friend's door and they yell 'who is it?' 'It's me' sounds much more natural than 'It is I.' 'Who's been eating my turnips?' 'It was she!' They always tell you that you'd have to answer the question 'she has been,' so then, logically, 'It was her!' is wrong. This is also the reason why it is technically wrong to answer 'Me!' to a question such as 'Who won?' But as the folly of the no double negative bullshit rule has proven, prescriptivist 'logic' and syntax can often butt heads. Most people, at least in the States, who use forms like 'It is I' and 'It was she' sound like a.) bourgeois snobs -- the socially mobile (or so they think) 'new-money' people who constantly prove that you can have a lot of money but you'll never be upper class no matter how much you want it (this is where Chevrolet and Hummer get their entire market for Avalanches and H2s). I can almost guarantee you that the 'correct' form appears more often in upper-middle class speech than in actual upper class speech (See William Labov's 'fourth floor' study in New York for this phenomenon in action).

Or, you could sound like b.) a non-native speaker of English who has learned from a textbook which declares these forms as correct.

In both cases, your speech will be highly marked, either as a snob or a foreigner. I don't mind foreigners, and am in fact intrigued by systematic mistakes of non-native speakers, but I can't stomach snobs, especially the ones who habve nothing to be snobby about. I remember being with my girlfriend and her family looking for the presentations of some architectural projects. when we found them, my girlfriend said 'Here they are,' to which her mother responsed 'Oh, these are they?' I wanted to laugh out loud at this and how what she thought would make her sound smart only made her look like a twit. She's from Joliet, Illinois, and I can bet anyone reading this that that form is NOT in her native grammar. Any speaker of any standard American English dialect would immediately find that construction as odd. But, in all fairness, any alternative is awkward: 'This is them, these are them,' all sound kind of funny, but none as bad as 'these are they.'

So the question to a theorhetician is 'are these accusative surface forms actually accusative?, and if not then why do they show up?' Maybe it's because speakers are putting objects behind all verbs, regardless of its grammatical function. This is definitely hardwired into the grammar of the speakers who use these forms. But does that actaully make them accusative? And what implications does this have for the nouns they are replacing? If we construct 'It is him' as S-V-O ( as opposed to S-V-S), then what doe sthis say about 'It is John.' Is the underlying cas eof this S-V-S or really S-V-O. I don't know the answers to these questions. All I know is that my girlfriend's mother cringes when I say 'It was me and him' and even 'him and her are getting married' (this is highly nonstandard, and has nothing to do with the predicate nominative, I admit). But what do I care? I'm a linguist, and my experience as one has made me proud of this. Samuel Johnson can shove it up his split infinitive.

All of this information is my intellectual property... please attribute any quotes and do not copy in full. Thank you. DISCLAIMER: This is my first time formatting a node. Apologies in advance. If the BR tag doesnt work this whole thing is screwed.....

The Forgotten Mood Of English:
The Subjunctive, An Investigation
by Mark McGrath
INTRODUCTION

Why the subjunctive? Well, I suppose it all started when I began to learn French. I wanted to understand the subjunctive mood. I thought it strange that English had no such mood to compare, or at least that's what I had been told. Then, partially as a result of one of my teachers, the internet mailing list langmaker2@egroups.com, and my own personal curiosity, I began to realize that the English subjunctive did indeed exist, albeit almost completely forgotten by non-scholars and certainly not something they taught in school. As I started finding little gems here and there of a no longer regularly used mood, my curiosity and intense interest were piqued. To set down my findings coherently and completely, I have decided to write this paper as I am in the research process. One thing I would like to make clear is that I am certainly not out to write a prescriptive grammar or treaty on correct usage (which I am certainly not qualified to do). I wish only to record more recent colloquial and literary usages and try to at least partially describe and explain them. That said, I hope that you, the reader, find this work of interest.

DEFINITION OF THE SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD

To study the subjunctive, I must first set down a loose guideline or definition to which to adhere when classifying the subjunctive mood. Webster's Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged) defines it thusly: "adj LL subjunctivus (trans. of Gk hypotaktikos), fr. L subjunctus (past part. of subjungere to subjoin) + -ivus, -ive -- more at SUBJOIN: of, relating to, or constituting a verb form or set of verb forms that represents an attitude toward or concern with a denoted act or state not as fact but as something entertained in thought as contigent or possible or viewed emotionally (as with doubt, desire, will) ..." Similarly, and I will be touching upon this subject as well, it defines subjunctive equivalent as, "n: a verb phrase formed in English with a modal auxiliary (as shall, should, may, might) and functioning in a manner comparable to the subjunctive mood." Besides the WID, I would like to thank H.W. Fowler's "A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Second Edition".

THE SUBJUNCTIVE SURVIVING INTACT TO MODERN DAY

There are some verbs and semi-regular phrases in which the subjunctive mood still actually survives in an unidiomatic form which I would consider 'pure,' or at least a bit more true to archaic forms of the language. The subjunctive is chiefly used after verbs of emotion or uncertainty, among which are hope, suggest, wish, want, and doubt, or after subjunctive phrases like it seems that or provided that. In English it is also to be found after such adverbs as if, unlike French (the only language I have to which to compare). Some verbs of this type (i.e. doubt, provide) are borrowed from French, although I doubt the corresponding grammatical forms are. Also to be noted is that where French usually requires the use of the conjunction que (that), modern English freely drops the word that from its subjunctive forms, and all subordinal conjunctive/relative propositions, for that matter. When English verbs form into the subjunctive mood, they can take on certain characteristics. Since the verbal inflection has almost disappeared in modern English save for the third person singular (-s), it is in this person that the subjunctive can be most easily noticed. Unfortunately for our study, a good deal of subjunctive utterances are made in the second person and third person subjunctive phrases sometimes sound a little stilted to the modern speaker. Here are a few examples:
I suggest that he write a letter to his mother.
I will let you go to the party, provided that Martin go with you.

The reason that the subjunctive can be recognized in these instances is the difference from indicative form. Instead of "he writes", "he write", instead of "Martin goes", "Martin go", etc. Nowadays, however, most people find "...provided that Martin goes with you" more natural. The most common subjunctive of this type is to be found in the passive voice. I now give some examples listed by H.W. Fowler:
Public opinion demands that an inquiry be held.
He insists that steps be taken to meet this danger.
He is anxious that the truth be known.

"Be" is one of the two or three (depending on your definition) subjunctive forms of the verb "to be". The other universally recognized one is were, usually used with the verb to wish and the adverb if:
I wish I/you/he/she/it were somewhere else right now.
If he were my son, I'd discipline him severely.

THE PRETERITE FORM AS A SUBJUNCTIVE
In certain phrases, notably if..., the form usually signifying the preterite (simple past) can be used as a subjunctive form. This is not to say that the form actually signifies the past at all, but that the subjunctive and preterite forms happen to be the same in these cases.
If he heard that he would kill you!
In this case we can distinguish if he heard that, which doesn't signify a specific time at all but rather a proposition outside current reality, from he heard that, which definitely signifies an action in the past. Similarly, where people have dropped the usage if he were as awkward, and instead substituted if he was, the form was is inarguably subjunctive, having nothing to do with the actual past (hence the third form of to be's subjunctive). I submit that in modern English this preterite form, possibly by analogy, is in the process of becoming the actual subjunctive, eliminating the irregularly subjunctive verbs. For example, most people would not say If he go with them, they would say If he went with them. Went is still not signifying a past action, unless in the interrogative form If he went with them, why didn't you? Therefore it is a subjunctive form.

THE SUBJUNCTIVE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE PRESENT
There is another trend of the subjunctive in English that is much less noticeable, because it makes use of the present form of the verb. As English grows more analytical, the use of the present tense is decreasing dramatically in relation to the use of the present participle. If someone inquired where you are going, chances are you would say, "I'm going to the store," rather than, "I go to the store." The present tense is used much more frequently to express a habitual action such as, "I go to that store every Thursday," where one would almost certainly not use the present participle. Exceptions do arise, such as, "Wow! You're in great shape!" "Thanks, I'm going to the gym almost every day now."

In this decay of the present tense we can find the subjunctive still vying for survival. For example, the use of the subjunctive after the verb to bet has completely disappeared from present-day English. However, forms exist as, "I bet he finishes first." Such a construction is obviously subjunctive in that it expresses a possible future action in the present-tense form. In ninety-nine percent of all cases I must concede that the subjunctive form is indistinguishable from the present form and therefore is practically dead (although semantically not so) in these instances, especially when the -s is appended to third person singular verbs.

INFIINTIVE SUBSTITUTION OF THE SUBJUNCTIVE
After verbs which formerly used the subjunctive mood, we often find the 'logically odd' but economical construction of the accusative pronoun (or just regular noun) plus the infinitive. Thus we are saved from saying, "I want that he be good today," instead we use, "I want him to be good today." Alternatively, in the negative sentences like, "I don't want him seeing that girl anymore!" the present participle is sometimes found. When you look at the latter sentence from a logical point of view, which is often futile in English grammar altogether, the subject doesn't really want the "object" (him), but rather wishes that the subject of the subjunctive clause exhibit the characteristic of being good. Perhaps on the model of the predicate nominative one could label this phenomenon the "subject accusative". In a modern language that retains the subjunctive such as French we find "Je veux qu'il soit sage," (I want that he be good/behave), whereas the phrase, "Je le veux être sage," (I want him to be good/behave) is completely absurd. This illustrates the difference between French and English, which has all but lost its subjunctive form yet still feels a subconscious need to convey the emotion in "I want him to be good," instead of losing it completely in the non-subjunctival construction, "I want (that) he's good."

Another usage of the infinitive as subjunctive can be found in phrases such as, "I am to be executed tomorrow." The entire verb is "am to be executed," which is voiced in the passive and signifies an event that will probably take place in the future, but is not yet fact. A sentence like, "He is to give her a tour," could be voiced actively as, "He/One wants/wishes/demands/etc that he give her a tour."

IDIOMATIC REMNANTS OF THE SUBJUNCTIVE
"A Dictionary of Modern English Usage" gives a good list of living idioms using the subjunctive otherwise lost in analogous forms. Here are some, including my own additions:
Manners be hanged!
Come what may,
Be that as it may,
Far be it for me to...
Though all care be exercised... (though...be...)
So be it.
So say he (or for archaic effect So sayeth he).

A good example taken from my Introduction is the word albeit, certainly of modern currency, which is a contraction of the form although it be. Fowler considers the subjunctive's use in formal motions (as in, I move that Mr. Smith be appointed Chairman) established idiom, and under American influence its scope has been widened to be used after any words of command or desire (several of which have already been exemplified).

SUBJUNCTIVE EQUIVALENTS
With the disappearance of the practical use of the subjunctive from everyday speech come its inevitable, more analytic replacements, should, shall, may, might, had better, and sometimes would.

Well, this is far from complete but I am notorious for not completing stuff. Hope you enjoyed!
And now some links for the fucking hell of it!
Ahhhhhh that was fun.
Cheers!

Style

One day I would like to create a website of style advice for writers. It would be unlike most style guides because it would try to teach good writing. Most guides for writers are all about: bad, wrong, lazy, ugly, silly. The only concession they make to good writing is the implication that good writers don't do any of the bad things. Most such guides are rubbish.

I would show you meltingly lovely, juicy pieces by Jane Austen or Dickens or Joyce or some noders here, and elaborate on why they're interesting, why they work, how fascinatingly balanced or imbalanced or surprising they are; or whatever it is that makes them stand out.

The only rule would be that There are no rules. If someone tells you you've broken a rule in your writing, they're wrong. There's no such rule. No matter what they say, they're wrong. So does this mean that anything goes? Not at all. My concern is with good and bad writing, and some is much better than others. If you're trying to give pleasure, it should be beautiful and interesting; if you're trying to persuade, it should be intelligent and truthful; if you want to be published it should conform to local conventions.

Spelling and punctuation are basically conventions: there are styles that are used in books, and writers or editors need to be aware of them. To heed them if they want to be conventional, to break them if they want to be unconventional. The same considerations apply on the Internet: it might be conventional in one place to write in leetspeak or lower case. I don't care what you choose to do; it doesn't matter; there aren't any rules about it. This is not what my style guide will be about.

I want to tell people how to make their language more beautiful and more interesting.

Grammar

Linguists use the word 'grammatical' in a special technical sense. To a linguist a sentence is grammatical for a speaker if it can be generated by the speaker's early-childhood knowledge of the language (plus maybe some words the child didn't know). Perhaps we shouldn't have appropriated the word 'grammatical' for this, but devised some new technical term, like 'generable' or 'generatively accessible'. Because we're treading on the toes of other people who also use the word 'grammatical', and mean something quite different by it.

As these other people use it, something is grammatical if it conforms to some rules that are out there somewhere, perhaps collected in books by people who know where to find them, and these rules apply equally to everyone who speaks the language, no matter what they learnt in early childhood. No linguist is interested in these rules. There is no branch of linguistics that studies them. We regard them as a folk fiction, puzzling and annoying, because belief in these folk rules actually prevents people from understanding their language properly.

You've got a gall bladder, right? Or a pancreas? So you can tell everyone how it works, and you're bound to get it all correct. Same with language. If you speak a language, you must be able to explain how it all works, right?

Back to my style guide. There are no rules, so all the rules those other people believe in are irrelevant. A linguist is like a doctor: we might not know much about how the human being works, but some of the things we've found out are true and surprising. There really are rules available from books if you're a foreigner learning another language. A foreigner has to learn that you can say 'Mary speaks fluent French' and 'Mary speaks French fluently', but you can't say *'Mary speaks fluently French'. And if I seem to be contradicting myself by saying 'rules' and 'can't', let me rephrase it: as a matter of empirical fact, native speakers actually do commonly say the first two, and virtually never say the last.

Good and bad language again. Stylistically bad language is often analysed as having problems with grammar. Well, if it's written by a foreigner this might be true: adult foreigners seldom attain the fluency of a five-year-old child born to it. But mostly, bad writing is by natives. Now I think people occasionally do make grammar mistakes in writing, for a variety of interesting reasons. One is that they start long sentences and forget half way through how they started. Another is that they get confused by those fictitious rules that prevent understanding: they think (wrongly) that there's some rule about singular 'they' or a final preposition; so they mangle a natural sentence into an awkward one.

From my experience as an amateur critic on writing sites, here and elsewhere, I find much of the problem is with editing and reading. After you've done all the writing, you need to edit it; and each time, after editing it, you need to read it again to see how it sounds. I'm thinking a little more of fiction here, but it's generally applicable: how good does it sound, and does it convey what you want to convey? Now my style guide would go into a lot more detail, and discuss many subtleties, but for now I just want to look at sentences that are clearly, unmistakably wrong.

But there are no rules, and I can assume the writer hasn't made any mistakes in grammar. It's something else that's making it wrong, and that something is (often) what is seldom properly discussed in those other style guides: it's context. This is what I feel I can contribute as a linguist.

Context

'Wearing a frilly pink dress, John saw Mary.' -- That's wrong, ludicrously and unbearably wrong. Unless you do mean it to say what all your readers will read it as saying, you have to change it. This is obvious with this example, but in real writing I see things like this, a little less obvious, but still standing out like a sore thumb as conveying the wrong meaning. Yet people write it, and can't see anything wrong even when it's pointed out. But I'm pretty sure most readers read it the way I do: so how can I explain this? Now there's no real grammatical rule about the modifier clause attaching to either John or Mary, and I don't think there's even one of those fictitious rules about it either. (If there is, I don't care.)

What one of those bad style guides would tell you, however, is that this is a misplaced modifier or a dangling participle, or some such, and they're bad. Well that style guide is wrong. It's not the construction that's bad, it's the context. The same sort of construction in the right context can be perfectly unambiguous and normal.

'With its pink ribbons and lacy frills, John saw that the dress would be ideal for Mary.' -- Now there is, technically, still a grammatical ambiguity here, and it's possible to notice and smile at the thought of John in ribbons and frills, but that's clearly not what the sentence says. Readers aren't robots, they know that dresses have frills and ribbons, and that the word 'its' at the beginning is going to hook up with an inanimate object later on. You've got a choice of two things the modifier could theoretically be attached to, and you choose the obvious one. This is how language works.

People often have what seems to be an essentialist view of language: they think that a word must mean some definite or precise thing, and that therefore any use of the word that doesn't fit that must be somehow less perfect, less 'correct', in need of apology. But this is not how language works. We understand usages.

'John saw Mary in the telescope.' -- No problem with this. The meaning is clear and straightforward. Of course if Mary's an astronomer, the context might show that he actually saw her inside the giant telescope. There's no such thing as the meaning of the word 'in' that tells us what 'in the telescope' means regardless of context. Compare 'John saw Mars in the telescope' and 'John saw an insect in the telescope'. No problems there.

A typical error of essentialism is to think of one canonical use of a word, and to try to insist on it. Think of a sentence using the word 'in'. Probably you get some picture such as 'the toy is in the box': enclosure within a three-dimensional object, as if 'in' meant 'inside'. So some people confronted with the variable usage of 'in the telescope' (note, none of the examples I gave were ambiguous) would assume that this really means 'inside the telescope', and that the other usage is less admissible, and should even be changed to something else: perhaps 'through the telescope'. But if the planet is Thrandor and the astronomer is Thurston, you can't say 'Mary saw Thrandor through Thurston's telescope.' You just mustn't say that, except for laughs, as it sounds dreadful, and is definitely not good writing. The context here is not world knowledge (about how big insects or telescopes are), but sound.

This is going off the point slightly, but to see how wrong the impression that 'in' = 'inside' is, look at nature. You might write off 'in a moment' or 'in a hurry' or 'in the background' as figurative, but look at 'in the sea', 'in a field', 'in a ditch', 'in the air', 'in the hedge'. Even with enclosing objects: compare 'the flowers are in the vase' and 'the bee is in the vase'.

Context is pervasive. Sentences aren't built out of words like blocks. We understand what 'in' means in one place by its context; we understand what 'in the vase' means likewise. We understand so-called dangling participles in the same way. Unfortunately, 'Wearing the frilly pink dress, John saw Mary' just does give the wrong impression, because it's so easy to think of John wearing the dress; but we do this because we're so used to sentences that go 'Wearing..., Mary...', and this one isn't different enough. Stylistically, it needs to be tweaked somehow. But there are no rules about how to do so. Only taste, judgement, choice, rereading with a fresh mind. Read not for what you wanted it to say, but for what it does say when you read it.

This is not my style guide, and I haven't given any guidance on particular points, but I have sketched the kind of approach I would take and why.

Here's how Fowler introduced this subject in the 1920s, in Modern English Usage:

The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know & condemn; (4) those who know & approve; & (5) those who know & distinguish.

1. Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority, & are happy folk, to be envied by most of the minority classes; 'to really understand' comes readier to their lips & pens than 'really to understand', they see no reason why they should not say it (small blame to them, seeing that reasons are not their critics' strong point), & they do say it, to the discomfort of some among us, but not to their own.

In the second class are the people Fowler most strongly condemns: those who have heard there is a bad thing called a split infinitive, but don't know what it is. "These people betray by their practice that their aversion to split infinitive springs not from instinctive good taste, but from tame acceptance of the misinterpreted opinion of others."

By this he means people who would write "really to be understood" or "to be understood really", both of which are ugly, in order to escape the imagined fault of splitting the verb complex and writing "to really be understood" or "to be really understood". The last two ways are the good, plain English ways of saying it, yet people in class 2 imagine they are taboo. Yet only the first of the two is a "split" infinitive: there isn't even an imaginary rule against the second.

Those in class 3, who know what it is and don't want to do it, can be recognized by the weird distortions they come up with. A word is in the wrong place, a phrase reads wrong, it is unnatural, there is something stylistically awkward about it: why would anyone write this? Aha! They're trying to avoid a split infinitive. So they twist away from natural English because they're following this imaginary "rule".

Example: "Every effort must be made to increase adequately professional knowledge & attainments." Huh? Adequate professional knowledge...? Oh, no, I see, what they meant was "to adequately increase professional knowledge". If you say it in the natural English way, it's so much clearer. Avoiding the split is unnatural and ugly and can read like nonsense.

The problem with the fourth class, who deliberately use the split infinitive, is that so many people (including, unfortunately, editors and proofreaders and teachers) are aware that it might be frowned on that they are prepared to advise "better not do it", just in case someone thinks you're ill-educated.

In my opinion it would be far better if teachers and editors actively encouraged plain English, and struck out queer circumlocutions like "to increase adequately": if they insisted that splitting infinitives is the good, correct English way. Note: not merely tolerated, not merely letting you off a rule which is supposed to exist, but coming out and saying very firmly there is no such rule.

It is a superstition. It is a fetish. If you're a native-born speaker of English, then you know all the true rules of the language instinctively. If someone comes up to you and springs a new rule on you, one you have to mind as an adult, they're wrong. There is no such rule.

You don't find these fictional rules in grammar-books. You don't find them in dictionaries. Grammars and dictionaries are there for describing what people actually say: it's been a hundred years since a respectable work of authority laid down the law (or rather claimed to).

What grammarians and lexicographers say hasn't filtered down to teachers yet, and you still get teachers saying that such-and-such is a rule, or is bad. Well the teacher is wrong.

RULES FOR APOSTROPHE USE

Below are the key rules for using the apostrophe (').

These rules are those which apply in modern British English (as taught in High Schools and Universities throughout the Commonwealth).

PLURALS

When you add an 's' to make a plural, it NEVER takes an apostrophe. Never. There are no exceptions. The same is true for plurals of abbreviations - it is A.T.M.s, not A.T.M.'s and G.P.s not G.P.'s.

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CONTRACTIONS

In contracted words - words formed by joining two words together and missing out some letters - the apostrophe takes the place of the missing letters so that:

Do not becomes Don't
I would becomes I'd
She will becomes She'll
We have becomes We've, and so on.

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POSSESSIVES

Apostrophes are used to make a noun possessive - i.e. to show the ownership of an item.

With a singular noun, (such as John, horse, New Zealand), an apostrophe and an s are added at the end of the word to indicate ownership:- John's coat, the horse's tail, New Zealand's beautiful scenery. The exception to this is singular nouns which end in the letter s. For possessives, these are treated in the same way as plural nouns.

The possessive form of plural nouns and singular nouns ending in s (such as boys, dogs, soldiers, princess) is indicated by placing an apostrophe at the end of the word, but no s after the apostrophe:- the boys' boots, the dogs' collars, the soldiers' rations, the princess' gown.

The possessive form of a pronoun does not take an apostrophe at all but instead is an entirely separate word, as set out below:

Me - My/Mine
You - Your/Yours
He - His
She - Her/Hers
It - Its
We - Our/Ours
They - Their/Theirs
Who - Whose

Where alternatives are given, which you use will depend on the structure of the sentence, e.g.:

This is my/your/her/our/their house or

This house is mine/yours/hers/ours/theirs.

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COMMON MISTAKES

There are two very common mistakes in apostrophe use, and both come from not following the rules set out above:

Its, It's and Its': The possessive form of the word it is its, without an apostrophe anywhere, because it is a pronoun and follows the special rules for possessive pronouns. It's can only mean it is, or it has following the rules for contractions, and depending on context, and its' doesn't exist at all, since the plural of it is they.

Whose and who's: Once again, who is a pronoun, and following the rules for possessive pronouns, the correct possessive is whose. The word who's is a contraction of who is or who has.

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If you use these rules you will never be using the apostrophe incorrectly, since although U.S. English is, as Gorgonzola points out below, less prescriptive, there is no situation where applying the rules above would be positively wrong, Strunk and White notwitstanding.