Miss Communications

“Its” or “It’s?” It’s a Matter of its Usage

At the risk of sounding like Emily Litella – that cranky old Gilda Radner character who never quite knew what was going on – sometimes Miss Communications simply feels the need to ask: What’s all this about “its” and “it’s”?

It’s amazing how many well-educated grown-ups – people who presumably passed eighth-grade English and now hold actual jobs – simply fall apart when they’re faced with this three-letter word. When does it need an apostrophe, they wonder, and when does it not? And when it does, where does the little sucker go?

When it comes to apostrophizing “its,” there are all sorts of reasons it’s confusing, and its confusion has a lot to do with the rules we’ve learned. We were taught that when a noun is possessive, we use an apostrophe and an “s” to show it. Thus the room of Emily becomes “Emily’s room” and the drawings on the shoes of Kylee become “Kylee’s shoes’ designs.”

But for this little word, it’s the exception that creates its difficulty.

“It” is treated differently, and as many people remember – but far too many forget – “it” doesn’t take an apostrophe when it’s possessive. Therefore the stuff within a museum becomes “its art collection,” and that early morning racket from your neighbor’s dog may someday – we can hope – become “its last woof.”

How can the average e-mailer and slide-creator keep track of the apostrophized “it’s”? It’s actually pretty simple when you consider its logic: You use an apostrophe when “it’s” is short for “it is” or “it has.” Thus, it’s a beautiful day for a grammar lesson, and it’s been wonderful to let Miss Communications’ inner grammar nut run wild.

Of course, it’s all good and well to remind people that written language has its rules, as foggy as they may be. But it’s even more valuable to provide a handy-dandy way to commit its rules to memory.

Some say the best way to remember that the possessive “its” has no apostrophe is to compare it to “his,” “hers,” and “yours.” Those are possessive pronouns, too, and hardly anyone tries to sneak a punctuation mark into them.

As for using “it’s” correctly, compare “it is” and “it has” with “they are” and “we have.” They’re also contractions, and we’ve noticed that people pretty consistently remember to add apostrophes where the missing letters (and spaces) once were.

Now, what about that oddball freak of English where folks decide to put an apostrophe at the end of “its,” as in “its’ ”? Most of us know that no such word exists, but for those who are unconvinced, we can only suggest looking it up in a dictionary, where it’s certain you’ll discover its absence.

If you’ve got a pet language peeve and you think it’s worth its weight in ink, write to Miss Communications with your rant. If it’s a good and sensible one, we’ll share its wisdom with the world. And if it’s not? Then as Miss Litella would have said, never mind.

This classic Miss Communications column was originally published February 22nd, 2008, and was awarded first place for "Specialized Columns" by Colorado Press Women as well as the National Federation of Press Women. Unfortunately, the column's title was mis-punctuated on the CPW award. Surely there's a joke in there somewhere.

Reducing E-Mail is an Earth-Friendly Move

What does e-mail cost? It involves no paper, no stamps, and no gas-guzzling trucks or airplanes to transport it around the world. And because most desks are already outfitted with a computer and a network connection, it looks as though e-mail is pretty darn cheap.

But the real cost of e-mail – especially extraneous junk – is surprising.

First, of course, there’s time. Many of us spend several hours handling e-mail each week. And while much of that time is spent on actual work, a lot of it is squandered – deleting spam and wading through unnecessary cc’s, for example, or straining to understand what a too-hastily typed message is supposed to mean.

Second, there’s equipment. While it feels like e-mail takes little more than a keyboard and a screen, the world’s IT departments and CTOs know there’s much more to it. In most organizations e-mail requires servers and back-up servers, giant disk-based storage units, uninterruptible power supplies and more – not to mention all that specialized, expensive square footage to hold it all.

And third, it takes fossil fuels. Yes, even though e-mail is a pretty energy-efficient way to send information around the world, it still takes carbon-based fuel to run all that gear.

Earlier this month – just in time for Earth Day – a study called “The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report” was released by climate-change consultancy ICF International. The study was commissioned by the folks at McAfee – security vendors who love to show us the negative effects of too much inbox junk – and it purports to assign real numbers to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that e-mail is responsible for.

According to the report, one message is responsible for 0.3 grams of CO2, which is roughly equivalent to driving three feet in the average vehicle. After about 62 trillion e-mails (the amount of spam that’s expected this year), the damage is equal to driving around the Earth 1.6 million times. A state-of-the-art filter, the report says, could reduce today’s “spam energy” by 75 percent, which is the equivalent of taking 2.3 million cars off the road.

Unfortunately, the methodology behind the grams-per-spam estimate isn’t clear, and as other writers have pointed out, even if people stopped spending CPU cycles and mouse clicks on junk e-mail, they’d probably expend the same energy on some other – albeit more productive – computerized task.

But extraneous e-mail is still an expensive waste, whether it’s from spammers, clueless marketers, or co-workers who aren’t thinking things through. By various estimates, the average number of business-oriented, non-spam e-mails sent and received is now about 180 per person per day, and it’s expected to exceed 225 by next year. And not all of them, as we know, are useful.

But each of us can do something to help.

Whether we’re tree-huggers, IT professionals, or just ordinary people trying to get things done, we can all think globally and act locally – in our own little outboxes – to stop wasting energy, resources, and a whole lot of time.

We can all work to reduce our e-mail footprint. It’ll do us a world of good.

Celebrate National Something Day

April 18th is National Columnists Day, and as one of our own is fond of saying, I’m not making that up.

As to how you’re meant to celebrate this special time, that’s entirely unclear. You could send flowers, of course, or simply tap out an enthusiastic note of appreciation – or reproach.

Or you might take a page from the Book of Smart Communicators and look into discovering your own special days; those publicly declared holidays that mean something to your industry and organization.

After all, it’s always national something day, and capitalizing on celebrations and awareness weeks can be a sensible way to bring attention and publicity to your work.

Here’s the drill: Simply find the holidays that are related to your areas of specialty, then plan some great events or campaigns around them. If you want the media to notice, send out a sharp news release that educates while offering a brilliant story idea or two.

If you’re in the medical field, for example, you might check out the National Health Observances Calendar and note that April is Cancer Control Month, or that Safe Kids Week and National Senior Health & Fitness Day are both coming up.

If you’re in the hospitality or travel industry, you could plan something for National Tourism Week or American Adventures Month. And if you’re in high tech, watch for Computer Security Day as well as Embrace Your Geekness Day.

Whether you’re into education and training, photographs and genealogy, pets, food, sports or books, there’s at least a day, a week or a month for you. 

If you can’t find a holiday that specifically honors your industry, get creative and come up with a tie-in to something you like. Try Girlfriend’s Day, “Someday We’ll Laugh About This” Week or Cranky Co-Workers Day. How about National Talk Like a Pirate Day or – heck, why not? – Nude Recreation Week?

When it comes to crafting your news release, remember that your story isn’t going to be appealing if it’s all about you, the products and services you offer, and your special pricing this month. It’s much more likely to catch an editor’s attention if it brings awareness to an interesting local event – especially if there’s a non-profit or public-service angle. And it’s much more likely to get press if you send it out a week or two before the event.

And just for good measure, be sure to write it well and proofread carefully so your organization looks smart and professional.

The point of all these often-serious and sometimes-funny holidays is to call attention to industries, people and causes, and with a little intelligent work you can capitalize on that attention for the good of your own organization. Just be sure to do so with forethought and good intent.

One last note: Be sure to let the media know if your occasion presents a great photo opportunity, because photographers love knowing their schedules in advance. Especially if there’s something interesting going on, like Take Your Plants for a Walk Day. Or Nude Recreation Week.

How Do You Say That?

Years ago, when my daughter Tenley was a preschooler, she had a little friend named Arthur. She also had a full complement of toddlerized speech impediments, and as a result she could barely pronounce her buddy’s name. “How do you say ‘Aw-fuw’?” she asked me one day. “I say ‘Arr-thurr,’” I told her slowly. “I tan’t say dat,” she replied.

Pronunciations can be difficult, and not just for kids. A number of words are tricky to wrap the mouth around – “specificity,” for example, and “Antarctica” – and they often get mangled in speech. Others, such as “comfortable” (usually “KUMPF-ter-bull” in America) and “February” (we've dropped the first “r”) become simplified by majority agreement – although there are those who will jump up and down when every little letter isn’t pronounced.

In fact, a lot of language watchers get wound up when it comes to pronunciation, and every once in a while Miss Communications gets appeals from well-meaning readers who want to set people straight. The “t” in “often” is silent, they insist, and “economy” starts with “eek,” not “eck.” The most vociferous argument: “Route” is supposed to rhyme with “boot,” not “bout.” After all, no one’s ever sung along to “Rout 66.”

Dictionaries, however, say otherwise. Look up any of these words and you’ll generally find more than one acceptable pronunciation (although my version of Webster’s insists on “ick” at the beginning of “economy,” making room for neither “eek” nor “eck”). Sometimes the differences are attributed to various regions or time frames, and sometimes they’re simply offered with no explanation at all.

Geography is where a lot of pronunciation standards break down. Not only do we have places such as Missouri, whose inhabitants call it “mih-ZERR-uh,” and a town in Virginia named Norfolk, whose phonetic spelling can’t be reproduced in polite company; we’ve also got a slew of everyday words that are either butchered or pronounced differently – depending on how you see it – according to where people come from.

Ask a Philadelphian to say “mirror” or a Louisianan to say “tomato” and see what you get. Are they wrong or simply regional? Po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to.

To a great extent, then, pronunciation isn’t carved in stone. But a lot of non-standard articulations get a lot of people’s backs up, and those can earn the speaker a reputation for cluelessness. Folks who “worsh” their cars and top off the “erl” will often be looked at sideways, and those who are “supposably” educated but insist upon ordering “expresso” on their way to the “liberry” will “probly” be viewed with suspicion.

How can you be sure your pronunciations won’t be considered improper by the people who hear you speak? Well, you can’t. Because for every flexible linguist out there, there’s a nit-picker who thinks there’s one right way to say everything.

But you can look things up to get some informed guidance and to be confident you’re not out in left field.

Just make sure that – whatever pronunciations or mispronunciations people may throw your way – you don’t have a “nucular” meltdown.

(This classic Miss Communications column was originally published November 14, 2008.)

The Social-media-versus-too-much-e-mail Smack Down

The headline – “Social networks, blogs more popular than e-mail” – was promising. But the hope – that people might actually be sending less e-mail, and therefore less time-wasting junk – was dashed by the facts.

As it turns out, the recent research from Nielsen – reporting that people are now spending more time on sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the like than they are in e-mail – merely reflects a lopsided jump in traffic. It simply heralds a new age in which everyone, from geezers and baby boomers to millennials and tweens, is sharing a whole lot of info on the Web.

According to Nielsen, time spent on social networking sites and blogs has recently grown more than three times as fast as time spent on the Internet overall, and the bulk of the shift has been driven by Facebook, which added millions of members in the older-than-high-school crowd between December 2007 and December 2008.

In fact, while about 7 million people under the age of 18 joined up in that timeframe, more than 24 million from age 35 to 49 jumped in, along with more than 16 million folks who are 50 and older.

So no, there aren’t any fewer e-mails clogging up the system; there are just more pages and posts and tweets filling up the day. We’re getting just as much inbox junk and spending just as much time wading through it – but we’ve developed some new online habits as well.

On the other hand, the fact that more people are socially networking means that our hard-working e-mail systems could get much better. With all the great info-sharing sites just a mouse click away, we could easily stop using e-mail to clog up our office networks and bog down our co-workers’ time.

It would be simple, for example, to stop sending personal updates (“Wait til you see my new shoes!”) to 12 of our closest working friends. It would be easy to stop forwarding funny stuff (“Top 10 reasons why men are like New Jersey”) to every colleague who knows we like a laugh.

It would take no effort at all to quit sending hilarious videos (“Look at all these drunks falling down!”) to the folks we think need a chuckle. And it would be no trouble to put every adorable pet story (“My cat thinks he’s a bunny!”) to rest. We could just tweet them, blog them or add them to our online walls, instead.

There’s no question that the Internet has become an enormous source of information, ideas, connection and fun. And there’s no denying that – for many – it’s become an enormous time sink, as well. But at least we can now share information on a look-at-this-if-you-want-to basis rather than an excuse-me-while-I-interrupt-your-work approach.

And once we all stop getting interrupted by those wasteful, stupid e-mails at work, what will we do with our extra time? Probably catch up on all that social networking – or as some people call it, “social not-working” – we’ve apparently grown to love.

Has social media replaced any of your e-mails?

When It's Truly Hard to Say Things Well

Sometimes it’s difficult to make ourselves understood when we speak. We’ve got a limited set of words to work with, we can’t always find the ones we want, and our listeners take in everything through imperfect ears, background noise and messy mental filters.

But imagine what it’s like for people who have trouble actually forming their words in the first place. For some, communication disabilities are a daily challenge, and getting ideas across is a difficult task. Recently, a teacher taught me a thing or two about overcoming that challenge in today’s business world.

Ron Stickler isn’t your average teacher. He’s a semi-retired businessman who trains people in personality recognition; how to improve business by understanding your clients well (you can find him online at ProsperitySales.com). Stickler has a prominent speech impediment – a noticeable slurring that came about after sudden heart failure and a long recovery in his 40s – and he handles it with patience, practicality and wit.

The wit comes first. When Stickler meets new people, he likes to joke to help put his listeners at ease. One of his favorite self-introductions, for example, includes the phrase “I’m not drunk – I just sound that way.” That self-deprecating humor might come across as awkward in print, but in person it’s funny – and it puts people in an understanding mood.

On a practical basis, Stickler makes adjustments in the way he runs his business to help ensure that his speech doesn’t get in the way. He does a lot of networking, for example, to meet people in person instead of by telephone. “Phone meetings are not a good match for me,” he said, “unless we’ve already met and they know I’m not as dumb as I sound.”

Stickler also has his outgoing phone message recorded by one of his daughters so it sounds more crisp and efficient than his own natural voice.

And then there’s patience. Stickler has learned to be patient with himself, deliberately slowing his speech to let his muscles keep up, and he’s learned to be patient with others, who often make inferences about his brain power according to the cadence of his voice. While he hopes for a day when those types of assumptions disappear, he also knows that his own adjustments are the most useful approach to helping people learn and understand.

With all the difficulties that Stickler’s speech impediment brings, he’s discovered that it presents a certain strength, as well: His intentionally slowed words often draw people in to listen more carefully, which can be particularly helpful while teaching. In fact, he likes to think of the 1970s TV show “Kung Fu” and the measured, deliberate way in which the David Carradine character and his Kung Fu master spoke.

Does that mean Stickler is glad that – as he puts it – his voice “sucks”? Not at all. But it does remind him that, with the right mindset, “The glass is always half full.”

And that, grasshopper, is a lesson we can all learn to articulate.