Lynne Truss Quote

The rule is: the word 'it's' (with apostrophe) stands for 'it is' or 'it has'. If the word does not stand for 'it is' or 'it has' then what you require is 'its'. This is extremely easy to grasp. Getting your itses mixed up is the greatest solecism in the world of punctuation. No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, 'Good food at it's best', you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.

Lynne Truss

The rule is: the word 'it's' (with apostrophe) stands for 'it is' or 'it has'. If the word does not stand for 'it is' or 'it has' then what you require is 'its'. This is extremely easy to grasp. Getting your itses mixed up is the greatest solecism in the world of punctuation. No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, 'Good food at it's best', you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.

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About Lynne Truss

Lynne Truss (born 31 May 1955) is an English author, journalist, novelist, and radio broadcaster and dramatist. She is arguably best known for her championing of correctness and aesthetics in the English language, which is the subject of her popular and widely discussed 2003 book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. The book was inspired by a BBC Radio 4 show about punctuation, Cutting a Dash, which she presented.
Besides her promotion of linguistic prescription and commentary on English grammar, Truss has written many radio plays, both comedic and dramatic. She has also written grammar guides for children and novels, including crime fiction. She was inducted into the prestigious Detection Club in 2021.