[OT] Nit: please don't user "it's" unless you can substitute "it is" without changing your inteded meaning.

[Peter Hansen]

Bengt Richter wrote:
> Typos happen to all of us, but in case you hadn't realized what "it's"
> is a contraction for ("it is"), now you do, and you can save yourself further
> embarrassment (assuming you care ;-).
> If your friends won't tell you, who will ;-)

Maybe we can also hold forth on "which" vs. "that", proper use of "I" 
versus "me" (usually the opposite of what many do), "each" vs. "all", 
and when to use "whom".  Also throw in the old stand-bys "they're" and 
"their" and other homonyms, but consider that often the mistake is not 
cause by a poor grasp of grammar but simply by writing too quickly, as 
one sometimes "hears" the words incorrectly in one's mind as one types, 
and then not proofreading adequately. (That's my excuse: I always catch 
"their" swapped with "they're" when proofreading, but I do sometimes use 
the wrong one when I write quickly.)

Of course, even the best of us make such mistakes, and holding everyone 
to task for it is probably not going to help.  This is a problem which 
only constant and instrusive reminders would cure, and the cure would be 
far worse than the disease.

> OTOH, how does one punctuate the posessive of a word per se?
> E.g., the first letter of "it" is "i", but can one write that
> as "it"'s first letter is "i," or it's first letter is "i" ? ;-)

When a construction is awkward, pick a different one.  '''The first 
letter of the word "it" is "i"''' should be just fine.

> I wonder if "Eats Leaves and Shoots" (a book on punctuation) has something on that.
> (vs, "Eats, Leaves, and Shoots" -- panda vs gunslinger).

Eats Shoots and Leaves: less cowardly than leaving _then_ shooting... 
also the actual name of the book. ;-)

-Peter