Those who have been following me for a while might recognize this muddle. I’ve shared it before, but I thought it would be worth sharing again since I see this mistake so often. You might say that it’s an everyday occurrence.
Here’s a trick to help you figure out which spelling you need. Complement, which means to complete, has the same first six letters as complete. Knowing that I should say nice things to people more often will help me remember that compliment has an i.
Here are a couple tips to help you know when you need the apostrophe. “Its” will be followed by a noun, though there might be a descriptive adjective (or several) before it. “It’s” might be followed by just an adjective. (e.g. It’s yellow.) But if “it’s” is followed by a noun, with or without a descriptive adjective, there will almost certainly be an article (a, an, the) or a possessive adjective before the noun. “It’s” might even be followed by “its”. For example: Why is there a bowl on the floor? It’s its usual location. It’s the dog’s food dish.
“Its” should never have an apostrophe after the s.
Autocorrect does not know the difference between “it’s” and “its”, so don’t trust it to choose for you.
The word “bear” can mean several different things depending on context. Conversely, “bare” really only means that there is nothing extra added.
The expression “bear with me” is asking for patience. The expression “bare with me” is asking for a whole lot more, and I always suggest that you want to be careful about when you use that one.
There is an old expression: he got his just deserts. It is spelled with one S in the middle. However, if you are setting up a banquet hall, and you want a table reserved for just desserts, you would spell that with a double S in the middle. I always remember that dessert has two Ss because I will want two servings of it.
Just deserts—what you justly deserve, usually used in relation to punishment.
Just desserts—a selection of only sweet treats and nothing else.
If you want to talk about an unpopulated island where someone might be stranded—the setting of many hypothetical questions—you could call it a desert isle (as was the case with the uncharted one that Gilligan landed on), or a deserted isle. The first means dry and barren; the second means abandoned, so probably still pretty barren. If you saw the Monday Muddle on April 5, you will know that a deserted aisle is what you might find in a grocery store on a slow day. The dessert aisle is less likely to be deserted.
“I’ll” sounds like “aisle” and “isle” (see last week’s Monday Muddle), but it’s less likely to be mixed up with them unless you are using voice to text software of some sort. If you leave the apostrophe out, however, you will end up with “ill”, which is not generally something people want.
I regularly see “isle” when “aisle” is meant, but the funny thing about that (for me) is that aisles are more like the river that flows around the islands of shelves. So it’s all kinds of backwards.
An “aile” isn’t English, but it still gets thrown into the mix now and then.
While we’re on the topic of possessive adjectives….
