Earths can be dangerous

or Live and Neutral.

And no apostrophe in possessive its.

Owain

Yes, but I can't remove the neutral or the appliance would no longer function. My point is the earth does not help the appliance work, all it does is add another possible path for electrocution.

That's subjective. "The car drove along the road with it's boot open". The boot belongs to the car, "it" owns the boot, so I include a possessive apostrophe. Why should Graham get an apostrophe but not it? Mind you, there are no instances of its or it's in what I wrote above, so what are you complaining about? Did you automatically assume I must have included one?

I agree that at first sight it's (it is) illogical that "its" (possessive) doesn't have an apostrophe, and neither does "hers" which could be construed as "her's" ie belonging to her. I imagine the reason is that the apostrophe is used for two very different circumstances: 1) possessives, 2) contractions of "it is" to "it's".Grammar scholars evidently decided that we need to be able to distinguish between "belonging to it" and "it is", and so decided that only one of the two would have an apostrophe.

I'd say that "it's" as a possessive is wrong... but for all the right, logical reasons :-)

In article , Jimmy Wilkinson Knife scribeth thus

God! You do come up with some real Bollix don't you!...

That was a failed attempt at a troll, even by your standards trollboy...

No, I come up with personal experience. Firstly it must go through your heart to have any chance of causing problems. Secondly, you need a weak heart for it to bother you.

It wasn't a troll, what makes you think it is? It's a genuine thing that I've done, accompanied by an explanation as to why.

Do you disagree with any of the basic laws of physics I've used in the above paragraph? If so, point out which sentence is wrong and explain your point of view.

The now unemployed and unemployable prick/troll is back. He has a degree you know. What a wanker.

Enjoy his bait.

He's a troll. Stop responding to him.

Really ?. I thought this NG was the source of all knowledge ?

Eh? The obvious thing to say here is you must have a lot of badly placed things with long cables in your kitchen.

I do not see your logic since the chewing animal will still get live and neutral so where is the difference if neutral is in fact earthed locally anyhow.

No I think you are having a laugh on us. Brian

Oh dear, you do realise you are very very close in many newsgroups of being plonked as a troll do you not? Brian

I propose that the apostrophe is basically redundant. If nobody can agree on its uses then I'm sure one could do so by context as far as the meaning is concerned.

Brian

Learn to use a killfile.

Nearly right. It's actually the source of all ignorance.

No, like everyone else I have a microwave plugged in near to itself. Therefore a pet can sit on top of the microwave and chew the microwave's flex. This could result in the live wire in it's mouth and the earthed chassis on it's feet, hence 240V through it's body. With no earthed chassis, it could only get live and neutral both in it's mouth. Perhaps a nasty burn to the tongue, but nothing through the heart so not life threatening.

Not close, already have, by fools. Fools which usually then moan and groan at everyone else for not plonking me, because their killfiles are incapable of deleting replies to me.

Then why did you write I'm instead of Im?

I do think it's pointless on things like "let's" because nobody still says "let us play chess", not since biblical times anyway. That would be confusing anyway, as "let's play chess" means you want to play, whereas "let us play chess" is asking a third person for permission to play.

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