The first is every English teacher's nightmare. Which of these is correct usage?
Put the book in it's place.Two hundred years ago, anybody who wrote it the first way was roundly beaten on his knuckles and made to write it the civilized way, meaning without the apostrophe. Things remained at that until the latter half of the 20th century, i.e. us.
Put the book in its place.
I have seen enough educated writers use the first version to believe that pretty soon the two sentences above will become equally acceptable, much as you are now allowed to say that you write better English than me. And even better English than I. What did you say? That "than I" sounds odd and that "than me" sounds pleasant? Maybe you would then agree that "it's place" is logical and "its place" just adds a new word to the lexicon.
Towards the end of the 19th century, controversy raged as to whether the new century properly began in 1900 or in 1901. The public was ranged about 1900 while the intellectuals scoffed and stuck to 1901. The intellectuals of course won, with their argument that since the first century began in 1 A.D., the 20th should begin in 1901 A.D.
This time around, the general public has won. The Seattle space needle is all booked on Dec. 31, 1999. You can have your picking on Dec. 31, 2000. This is another of those things where the public is probably correct, in not wishing to perpetuate historical mistakes. The monk who came up with the Anno Domini system lived in an Europe that did not know the concept of zero. Thus, the year after 1 B.C. is 1 A.D. It's high time we corrected this mathematical absurdity.
It is tempting to draw a generalization from both these things -- Vox Populi .
