I’m not one to mention every errant apostrophe I notice, I do let the odd one slip through. Honestly I do.
But…
Last night, after a busy day at the translation and interpreting coalface, I had a Mitchell & Webb sketch in my mind. While I’d been working a few hours earlier, somebody had said something as a throwaway line. Specifically, they said “are we the baddies”, a line which will either get you chuckling, or leave you completely impassive, depending on many things (geography, nationality, background, age, and so on) which I decided could only be exorcised by watching the original.
As is sometimes the case when you decide to look at something written a couple of decades ago, you are reminded that attitudes have changed since that time. Hopefully for the better, although 2025 is certainly a year to question whether that is always the case, but nobody can deny that they have evolved.
What hasn’t changed, though, is people’s inability to understand the difference between its and it’s. Before I’d even reached the opening credits for the programme I wanted to watch, my eyes had already been burnt by the message displayed on my TV screen.
Perhaps the message here really is that if one of our national broadcasters can’t be bothered to get it right, maybe it’s time for me to give up too. But then, on reflection, if my entire modus operandi is based on the idea of getting it right, perhaps I should double-down instead. I won’t fire off a letter to them, because I doubt it would make any difference, but I will use the opportunity to repeat, yet again, that if you’re going to focus on quality, every little word, comma, apostrophe, or whatever, counts.
So, here we go, it’s is never its unless it’s wrong (or something, I think I'm getting my knickers in a twist now).
And long live quality.
Oh, and the programme? Well, some of it was as fresh and funny as it had been 25 or so years ago, while other parts were completely cringeworthy. Sometimes it’s better just to remember things than to take another look.
