Well us folks in the UK (the ones who are old enough anyway) will remember the song by St Winifred's School Choir that topped the charts in 1980.
Anyway, I digress...
A funny thing happened to me as I was working away this evening. She who must be obeyed (yeah... right) called up from the kitchen, where she was sitting with our son as he typed up his poem for homework. Basically, the question eminating from the depths was "when you want to write 'the cow parachuted down to its cosy shed' is it 'its' or 'it's'?".
Initial reaction as someone who churns out loads of crud for a living on a daily basis was "It's 'its'"; however, panic began to set in mere seconds later and I dashed off a query into Google. Relief abounded as I confirmed my first thought. Smugly, I went to the landing, so as to reaffirm my opening reply "Yes, definitely 'Its'".
I suppose the main point of this post, other than to share my shamefaced admission that I had to check, is to wonder whether we do just type and hope that Word* (replace with wordprocessor of choice) will keep us on the straight and narrow. Because of spellcheck and grammar check, are we losing our understanding of grammar and punctuation?
Are we getting lazy over our use of written English?
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