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Saturday, December 12, 2009

ITS and IT'S again! And millions of dollars!

I counted. It's been nineteen days since the last time I spotted a grammar glitch with ITS and IT's. Here is the one that greeted me in a full page ad for Thomasville furniture this morning:



In preparation for a new Thomasville in 2010, the factory has authorized the liquidation of inventories from it's stores and millions of dollars from the warehouse.



Whoops! This ad is not talking about "it + is" stores. It is talking about stores belonging to the factory (the factory and its stores...). NO APOSTROPHE IS NEEDED WITH THE POSSESSIVE PRONOUN.



There is another problem here, too. I would love to have my share of the "millions of dollars" they've been hiding in that warehouse. According to this sentence, they are liquidating inventories from their stores AND liquidating millions of dollars from the warehouse. Where do I get in line???



The sentence ought to read as follows:



In preparation for a new Thomasville in 2010, the factory has authorized the liquidation of inventories from its stores as well as millions of dollars worth of inventories from its warehouse.



Amazing how much difference a little wording change can make!

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