it's and its

I like the midwife programme on BBC1 on a Sunday. It's the kind of programme the BBC is really good at: nostalgic, people in costumes, simple morality, topical issues of the time explained in a fairly straightforward way. Tonight the doctor's wife - a fine woman, Scottish, wears Edna Everage specs - found a place the young man with Down's Syndrome could go and live, one of very few places in the UK in 1962 for people with learning disabilities. Reggie was such a fine young man I suspect many a mother watching would have been glad to take him in. So the doctor's wife cut an article out of a newspaper and - heaven help me - there it was in the title of of the article: it's when it should have been its.

I know this rant is illogical. Most people would have moved on pretty fast if they even noticed the mistake. Not me. Sorry.

I spent a lot of my working life writing and proof-reading: committee papers, bids for funding, policy documents, course catalogues, teaching manuals, letters. I can still remember my rage when I discovered my admin person had ended the letter I wanted sent out to head teachers with the deathless phrase: 'If you need further information please contact myself.'

I suspect no one in the UK in the 1960s would have mixed up it's and its. Yes, shockingly, we were trained - drilled - in an understanding that it's meant two words had been run together: it is or it has. (And you'll notice I don't put a hyphen between no and one - same training).

Let me ask: why is this so difficult to understand? The UK is a pretty advanced society in education terms and in Scotland, we have the best educated population in the greater Europe, so why can't we get this right?

Is there no one left in our schools who knows grammar, spelling and punctuation - except maybe modern languages teachers? In today's Sunday Herald, a headline began: Tory's spin doctor claims... But, of course, the article referred to not one Tory but a sad Conservative spin doctor who services many Tories.

This level of illiteracy is becoming scary. I will forgive English people for their insistence on talking about 'being stood' and 'laying down.' These are just local variations. I can even forgive I seen and I done, because these are acceptable verb forms in Scots. But what the hell is going on with your and you're? Not to mention they're and their? And why are apostrophes being sprinkled around every time a plural is needed? Quote: our house's. That has me shouting at the computer screen: Our house is what? What?

For the first time ever, I'm editing one of my rants. I want to explain further why I think grammar, spelling and punctuation matter so much. Whatever computers can do, they can't edit. They can suggest alternative spellings and usages but if the writer doesn't know the difference between what s/he means and what the machine thinks s/he means, we're scuppered. If you think the form of words we use doesn't matter, just watch in days to come as Donald Trump's executive orders are taken apart by lawyers and judges.

For the sake of the sanity of old people like me, folks, please try to sort this out. The future of the language is in your hands.