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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • As “its” is used to indicate possession by “it”, “its” is an exception to apostrophe-s construction as used to indicate possessive forms.

    Most, if not all, pronouns work that way though.

    “The man’s arm” becomes “his arm” not “him’s arm”. “The woman’s arm” becomes “her arm” not “her’s arm”. Similarly, “the robot’s arm” becomes “its arm” not “it’s arm”.

    I don’t really care if people use “it’s” instead of “its” , but I don’t think it’s a unique exception. The only thing that’s unique is that it is pronounced the same way as if you tacked an apostrophe and an s on the end. If we used the word “hims” instead of “his”, I’m sure people would start putting an apostrophe in there too.













  • It’s contextual. If it’s used in a phone number, it’s a pound sign. If it’s placed before a number, it’s a number sign. If it’s placed before a tag, it’s a hash/hashmark/hashtag.

    No one would pronounce “#foo” as “pound foo” any more than they’d call a #2 pencil a “pound two pencil”. Because “pound” is clearly not the right name in either context.

    Americans have been comfortable using different names for the symbol in different contexts since long before hashtags even existed. So when websites started using them and referred to them as “hashtags”, that was fine. It was a new context so it could use whichever name it wanted. (Well, “octothorpe-tag” is probably far too unwieldy to catch on.)

    Of course if we’re talking about the symbol without a specific context, then we have to pick one of the names. For most Americans, that “default” name is probably still “pound”. Twenty years ago I’d definitely say that, but even then it wasn’t ubiquitous. It wasn’t uncommon to hear it referred to as a hash. And it seems like the use of “pound” has declined and the use of hash has increased as people now spend more time online and less time dialing phone numbers. There’s also a generational divide with older people more likely to say “pound” and younger people more likely to say “hash”.