# Theirs vs. their's



## Au101

Hi, I had a quick look and I couldn't see this question asked anywhere else. What I would like to ask is which is correct, theirs, or their's? e.g.

"Our project is not as good as their(')s."

Thanks.


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## audiolaik

Au101 said:


> Hi, I had a quick look and I couldn't see this question asked anywhere else. What I would like to ask is which is correct, theirs, or their's? e.g.
> 
> "Our project is not as good as their(')s."
> 
> Thanks.



Hello,

In my humble opinion, it's _theirs_.

Audiolaik


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## SwissPete

*Theirs*.

*Their's* does not exist in English.
Of course somebody will come along and prove me wrong...


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## Au101

Thank you both of you. I think, upon reflection, you are probably correct, after all, their is possessive already, it is hence redundant to have a possessive apostrophe.


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## sound shift

SwissPete said:


> *Theirs*.
> 
> *Their's* does not exist in English.
> Of course somebody will come along and prove me wrong...


"Prove" is a bit strong, I think: it's all opinion in WR. But I'm with you that their's does not exist.


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## GreenWhiteBlue

As noted above, "their's" certainly does not exist in English, and it is as incorrect as spelling "_his_" as "_hi's_".


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## sundreez

An apostrophe signifies a contraction: 
didn't = did not
 
I can't imagine what "their's" would be a contraction of.


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## mplsray

GreenWhiteBlue said:


> As noted above, "their's" certainly does not exist in English, and it is as incorrect as spelling "_his_" as "_hi's_".



*Ahem!* _Their's_ certainly does exist in English. It exists as a nonstandard spelling which has even gotten into print: See here.

_Hi's,_ on the other hand, is both more questionable and harder to search for via the Internet, since many hits for _hi's_ turn out to be the genitive form of the name of a man called Hi and others turn out to be the result of bad scanning from a book which was printed with no such apostrophe. But it is as absurd to say that _their's_ is not an English word as to say that _iz_ is not an English word: It may be misspelled, deliberately or not, but in context its meaning in unambiguous. Besides, no language is limited to its standard dialect or dialects.

It is inadvisable to use _their's,_ I agree. Just don't give as a reason that it "doesn't exist in English." That is as questionable an assessment as calling _ain't_ "not a word."


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## Philo2009

SwissPete said:


> *Theirs*.
> 
> *Their's* does not exist in English.
> Of course somebody will come along and prove me wrong...



I think not, as you are quite correct: it does NOT exist!!


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## pickarooney

Their's not the same word as there.


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## sundreez

mplsray said:


> *Ahem!* _Their's_ certainly does exist in English. It exists as a nonstandard spelling which has even gotten into print: See here.
> 
> _Hi's,_ on the other hand, is both more questionable and harder to search for via the Internet, since many hits for _hi's_ turn out to be the genitive form of the name of a man called Hi and others turn out to be the result of bad scanning from a book which was printed with no such apostrophe. But it is as absurd to say that _their's_ is not an English word as to say that _iz_ is not an English word: It may be misspelled, deliberately or not, but in context its meaning in unambiguous. Besides, no language is limited to its standard dialect or dialects.
> 
> It is inadvisable to use _their's,_ I agree. Just don't give as a reason that it "doesn't exist in English." That is as questionable an assessment as calling _ain't_ "not a word."


 
This same example also uses the word your's. Just because it is found in a book or the internet it does not follow that it must be correct. Books have incorrect words too as does the internet. Again I ask, what is their's a contraction of? Their's and your's do not exist in the English language.


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## Orreaga

sundreez said:


> Again I ask, what is their's a contraction of? Their's and your's do not exist in the english language.


Apostrophes do not only represent contractions, they are also used in possessives, such as "John's dog".  "John's" is not a contraction.  Apostrophes are commonly added where they are not grammatically needed in non-standard English, in words ending in "s", especially plurals.


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## ewie

sundreez said:


> Again I ask, what is their's a contraction of?


See the post _immediately above_ yours, Sundreeez


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## sundreez

When used in the plural it is not a contraction, but John's is simply short for "belongs to John". Their's is not plural and it makes no sense to say "belongs to their".


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## pickarooney

Their's spelling is a particular bugbear of grammar fans.


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## Orreaga

I am wrong, "John's" is considered by linguists to be a contraction of the Old English singular genitive ending, "-es".  So supposedly "Johnes" became "John's" in Modern English.


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## mplsray

sundreez said:


> This same example also uses the word your's. Just because it is found in a book or the internet it does not follow that it must be correct. Books have incorrect words too as does the internet. Again I ask, what is their's a contraction of? Their's and your's do not exist in the English language.


 
I was making no claim that _their's_ was correct. Quite the contrary: I pointed out in the very first paragraph of my post that it is a nonstandard spelling. I later said that _no language is limited to its standard dialect or dialects,_ an assertion that is relevant to the matter at hand and one which no modern linguist would question. _Just because a spelling is nonstandard does not make it non-English!_


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## Philo2009

mplsray said:


> *Ahem!* _Their's_ certainly does exist in English. It exists as a nonstandard spelling ...is as questionable an assessment as calling _ain't_ "not a word."



I believe you'll find that the questioner was enquiring about the existence or otherwise of the form in question_ in the standard language_ (feel free, however, to check with him/her in person if you are in any doubt), and is consequently entirely unconcerned with its use by the semi-literate. 　To all intents and purposes relative to this thread, and to this forum in general, the assertion of 'nonexistence' may be taken as meaning 'nonexistence_ in the standard language_'.


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## Brioche

mplsray said:


> I was making no claim that _their's_ was correct. Quite the contrary: I pointed out in the very first paragraph of my post that it is a nonstandard spelling. I later said that _no language is limited to its standard dialect or dialects,_ an assertion that is relevant to the matter at hand and one which no modern linguist would question. _Just because a spelling is nonstandard does not make it non-English!_



So anything and everything is still English, and only the opinion that something is _non-English_ is intrinsically wrong.

I think I've got it.


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## mplsray

Brioche said:


> So anything and everything is still English, and only the opinion that something is _non-English_ is intrinsically wrong.
> 
> I think I've got it.



Your conclusion does not follow from what I said.

Note that to say a word or expression is _nonstandard_ when discussing English usage is to accept that the word or expression is English. There are things which occur in English-language texts which are not English: foreign words which have not been naturalized, for example, and garbled text. _These are neither standard nor nonstandard English!_ Something like _their's,_ used instead of _theirs_ and _iz,_ used instead of _is,_ are, on the other hand, nonstandard English usages.


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## Saurabh

sundreez said:


> An apostrophe signifies a contraction:
> didn't = did not
> 
> I can't imagine what "their's" would be a contraction of.


 

Me either!

Cheers,
Saurabh


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## mplsray

Sometimes an apostrophe represents a contraction, sometimes it does not. It represents no contraction in the following:

_mind your p's and q's_

_Fred's_

_one's_

_the Smiths' daughter_

Those are standard usages. The apostrophe also occurs in some nonstandard usages:

_it's_ (a nonstandard genitive form of _it_)

_tomato's_ (an example of the greengrocer's apostrophe)

_your's_ (found in the source I cited earlier)


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## liliput

mplsray said:


> Sometimes an apostrophe represents a contraction, sometimes it does not. It represents no contraction in the following:
> 
> _mind your p's and q's_
> 
> _Fred's_
> 
> _one's_
> 
> _the Smiths' daughter_
> 
> Those are standard usages. The apostrophe also occurs in some nonstandard usages:
> 
> _it's_ (a nonstandard genitive form of _it_)
> 
> _tomato's_ (an example of the greengrocer's apostrophe)
> 
> _your's_ (found in the source I cited earlier)


 
There's a difference between usages that are not Standard English and those that are widespread errors. "It's" (as a possesive), "tomato's" and "your's" are as erroneous as "their's" and should be considered as errors, they are not alternatives or part of a dialect.

As for the other examples; 
"Fred's" and "Smiths'" are correct usages of the saxon genitive, "their's" is not. 
Personally I wouldn't write "p's and q's", and it's not required by traditional grammar rules, athough I understand that a significant number of people use it.
"One's" could be a contraction of "one is", but it is also the accepted possesive adjective for _one_. The inclusion of an apostrophe in its structure is an exception amongst possessives.

The possesive adjective for _they _is _their_ and the possesive pronoun is _theirs. _There is no place for "their's" here.

In general terms, there is some argument to be made for usage defining the language, but throwing away the rule book on the assumption that people will get what you mean is not a pathway to clear communication.


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## sundreez

iz may be non-standard (slang) but their's is simply incorrect. It implies a contraction where there is none.


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## mplsray

sundreez said:


> iz may be non-standard (slang) but their's is simply incorrect. It implies a contraction where there is none.



It implies no such thing. You are setting up a strawman argument. There is no more logical reason to believe that _their's_ (nonstandard) must be a contraction of a nonexistent word than there is to believe that _one's_ (the standard possessive form of the pronoun _one,_) or _it's_ (the once-standard possessive form of _it,_ now nonstandard) must be contractions of nonexistent words.


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## mplsray

liliput said:


> There's a difference between usages that are not Standard English and those that are widespread errors. "It's" (as a possesive), "tomato's" and "your's" are as erroneous as "their's" and should be considered as errors, they are not alternatives or part of a dialect.
> 
> ...
> 
> In general terms, there is some argument to be made for usage defining the language, but throwing away the rule book on the assumption that people will get what you mean is not a pathway to clear communication.



You are implying that I am throwing away the rule book, but from the very beginning I made a point of identifying _their's_ as nonstandard. That is not throwing away the rule book: It is, on the contrary, an acknowledgment and acceptance of the rules.

My objection to the claim by *SwissPete*, *sound shift*, and *GreenWhiteBlue* that _their's_ does not exist in English is that it is an illogical statement on a par with "_Ain't_ is not a word." _Ain't_ is indeed a word and _their's _does indeed exist in English.

Even before the age of the Internet, one would have been able to identify _their's_ as English by the fact that it is given as a form of the word in the entry "theirs" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Six cites are given. (It gives no cites for _hi's_ in the entry "his," by the way, although it has three cites for _'s_ as a form of that word.) In that case, it's a matter of historical usage, of course, just as the variant _it's_ as a possessive is a historical usage. But _it's_ as a possessive is also a current usage--nonstandard, of course. The same is true for _their's._ 

Widespread errors such as _tomato's_ and _their's_ are nonstandard usages. A nonstandard usage is in contrast to a nonce error such as _dord_ given as an entry in the 1934 Webster's New International Dictionary, and to a deliberately created false English word such as _esquivalience,_ given in the N_ew Oxford American Dictionary_ as a trap for plagiarists (See Michael Quinion's article here.) And, of course, in contrast to a nonnaturalized foreign word and to garbled text, as I mentioned in an earlier post.


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## sundreez

one's is possesive, it's is a contraction of it is and ain't is a slang used in dialects. Their's is an incorrect spelling of theirs.


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## abenr

mplsray said:


> *Ahem!* _Their's_ certainly does exist in English. It exists as a nonstandard spelling which has even gotten into print: See here.
> 
> _Hi's,_ on the other hand, is both more questionable and harder to search for via the Internet, since many hits for _hi's_ turn out to be the genitive form of the name of a man called Hi and others turn out to be the result of bad scanning from a book which was printed with no such apostrophe. But it is as absurd to say that _their's_ is not an English word as to say that _iz_ is not an English word: It may be misspelled, deliberately or not, but in context its meaning in unambiguous. Besides, no language is limited to its standard dialect or dialects.
> 
> It is inadvisable to use _their's,_ I agree. Just don't give as a reason that it "doesn't exist in English." That is as questionable an assessment as calling _ain't_ "not a word."



If we say "their's" exists in English, we may as well say "thairz" exists in English.  This forum aids those learning English. I feel it's wrong not to point out errors.  (As to "ain't," I accept that as a word.)


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## StrongArmingEvil

mplsray said:


> You are implying that I am throwing away the rule book, but from the very beginning I made a point of identifying _their's_ as nonstandard. That is not throwing away the rule book: It is, on the contrary, an acknowledgment and acceptance of the rules.
> 
> My objection to the claim by *SwissPete*, *sound shift*, and *GreenWhiteBlue* that _their's_ does not exist in English is that it is an illogical statement on a par with "_Ain't_ is not a word." _Ain't_ is indeed a word and _their's _does indeed exist in English.



Just because you've found proof that someone used "their's" does not imply that it is correct, or should be used by anyone.  Theirs is possessive, and to say "their's" is to say "their is" which is grammatically incorrect.


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## mplsray

StrongArmingEvil said:


> Just because you've found proof that someone used "their's" does not imply that it is correct, or should be used by anyone.  Theirs is possessive, and to say "their's" is to say "their is" which is grammatically incorrect.



Nowhere did I say that _their's_ is correct. Nowhere did I say that _their's_ should be used. My objection is to the accusation that it is nonexistent in English.

_Theirs_ is indeed a possessive pronoun, but so is _their's:_ It is _theirs_ misspelled. That's from the modern point of view, of course: As a historical spelling _their's_ goes back to a time when spelling was quite fluid and it would likely be as acceptable as once was the possessive _it's_. The second part of your last sentence is a non sequitur. There is not the slightest reason to believe that "to say 'their's' is to say 'their is'": The apostrophe serves many functions, and its use to stand in for letters when two words are combined into one, as in _he's_ from _he is,_ is only one of them.

Note, however, that but for a historical accident, _their's_ would be standard. As in the genitive form _Fred's_, the _s_ in _theirs_ is an example of the Saxon genitive. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the etymology of _theirs_ as:



> In form a double possessive, f. THEIR + _-es_ (cf. _hers, ours, yours_). Of northern origin.



The earliest cite in the OED spells the word as [_th_]_ayres_ (where [th] represents the letter thorn). Other cites spell the same word with the endings _-is_ and _-ys._ It was in just such forms that the last vowel came to be silent and was replaced with an apostrophe. That is, the apostrophe replaced a missing letter, but as a contraction of the genitive, not a contraction of two words. That the apostrophe was dropped in the possessive pronouns which stand in for nouns (_It is yours. It is ours._) is not a matter of logic, but rather of style. That is, your implied argument that there is something _logically_ wrong with the apostrophe in _their's_ is, based upon the historical evidence, a completely fallacious one.


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## mplsray

sundreez said:


> one's is possesive, it's is a contraction of it is and ain't is a slang used in dialects. Their's is an incorrect spelling of theirs.



_One's_ is a possessive, a contraction of _one is_, and a contraction of _one has._

_It's_ is a contraction of _it is,_ a historical spelling of _its,_ and a current nonstandard spelling of _its._

_Their's_ is a historical spelling of _theirs_ and a current nonstandard spelling of _theirs._


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## mplsray

abenr said:


> If we say "their's" exists in English, we may as well say "thairz" exists in English.  This forum aids those learning English. I feel it's wrong not to point out errors.  (As to "ain't," I accept that as a word.)



In fact, _thairz_ does exist in English. It was a spelling advocated in a spelling reform, as can be seen here.

The spelling reform is a spelling reform to English, not to some other language. What you get when you read aloud the page cited above is English, not some foreign language.

For that matter, _any_ pronunciation spelling of an English word is just as much English as is that reform spelling. It's not French. It's not Klingon. It's English! *Nonstandard English is still English.*


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## abenr

mplsray said:


> In fact, _thairz_ does exist in English. It was a spelling advocated in a spelling reform, as can be seen here.
> 
> The spelling reform is a spelling reform to English, not to some other language. What you get when you read aloud the page cited above is English, not some foreign language.
> 
> For that matter, _any_ pronunciation spelling of an English word is just as much English as is that reform spelling. It's not French. It's not Klingon. It's English! *Nonstandard English is still English.*



As I wrote earlier, this is a forum to aid people who are trying to learn English.  Learning that "thairz" is a misspelling of "theirs" does not help them in any way.  Why encourage misspellings?   Shall we teach them that "ghoti" is English for "fish." I would hope not.


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## mplsray

abenr said:


> As I wrote earlier, this is a forum to aid people who are trying to learn English.  Learning that "thairz" is a misspelling of "theirs" does not help them in any way.  Why encourage misspellings?   Shall we teach them that "ghoti" is English for "fish." I would hope not.



We should not spread incorrect information in this group. To say that _their's_ does not exist in English is just as incorrect as to say that _ain't_ is not a word.

As for what I have cited to back up my position, I'm sure some forum members, both native and nonnative speakers, have found it to be of interest, even if they disagree with my position.

Besides, I agree with Anthony Burgess that it is important to the student to look at language from a linguistics point of view. He taught both native speakers of English and students of English as a foreign language, and he always taught linguistic concepts to his students that most teachers of English never touch on. I think it's important to get things right. _Ain't_ is a word, a nonstandard word, and pointing that out is not equivalent to encouraging the use of _ain't._ _Their's_ is an English word, a nonstandard spelling of _theirs_--and pointing that out is not equivalent to encouraging the spelling _their's._ 

It's also interesting that _thairz_ was the spelling of _theirs_ in at least one proposal for reforming English spelling, although it is only an unusual circumstance--that someone claimed it was nonexistent in English--that led to its being mentioned in this thread. It can't hurt the student of English as a foreign language to be aware of the fact, however, and, if he remembered _thairz_ later, it might indeed help him by acting as a sort of mnemonic to remind him of the discussion in this thread, which would more likely than not cause him to steer clear of the spelling _their's!_

Addition: It does not hurt to teach students the _ghoti_ spelling of _fish._ My take on it, if I were to use it--and the following observation is not original to me--would be to show how the spelling actually breaks, rather than follows, the rules of English. _Gh_ is indeed one spelling of /f/, for example, but it never occurs with that pronunciation at the beginning of a word in standard English spelling.


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## rpleimann

Au101 said:


> Hi, I had a quick look and I couldn't see this question asked anywhere else. What I would like to ask is which is correct, theirs, or their's? e.g.
> 
> "Our project is not as good as their(')s."
> 
> Thanks.



Poor Au101.  The answer to your question is to leave out the apostrophe.


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## mplsray

rpleimann said:


> Poor Au101.  The answer to your question is to leave out the apostrophe.




*Audiolaik,* the very first person to answer the question, got it right.


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## Starfrown

mplsray seems to be one of the very few voices of reason in this thread.

Despite his very eloquently stated arguments, others continue to come forward saying that "their's" is absolutely incorrect.

Very recently, I read an old edition of Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" that used "their's" entirely to the exclusion of "theirs" (likewise it had "your's" for "yours").  How, then, could I boldly state that "their's" is wrong?  As mplsray stated earlier, but for unknown--unknown to me at least--historical accidents, "their's" might well have ended up the standard.

Needless to say, the best advice to the original poster is to use "theirs" always, as that is the practice in contemporary English.  However, it is my opinion that this forum ought to fully inform non-native speakers of alternate forms that he or she may encounter in some older texts, regardless of whether or not they were explicitly seeking such information.


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## Loob

Yes, it's a difficult one, Starfrown. I think your advice is wise: we should advise second-language learners to write _theirs_, but also advise them that they will sometimes come across _their's._


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## cuchuflete

As we all seem to agree that _their's_ should be avoided in current English, because it is a misspelled word, we can settle back and consider that in non-standard arithmetic, 2 +2 = 5 does exist.  I'm sure a search engine will find numerous examples of that statement. It may even appear in publications by noted authors.  It should nonetheless be avoided.

Gimme also exists.  So does wanna.  Gunna may be a frequent misspelling of gonna, which in turn represents a common
mispronunciation of an English term.  While people draw up teams to argue over the taxonomy of these things, some calling them non-standard, and others declaring them wrong, and still others claiming that they do or don't exist, the advice to the non-native (and native) learner of English is the same:  Avoid them.  Or, add them to the pile of red herring in which _thairz_ sits in all its (it's?) {itz?} fetid splendor.

When teaching English, it is sometimes useful to point out that there are frequent errors in spelling of some common words.
It may be useful to explain why and how these errors occur.  If that helps students to avoid the errors, it is a _good thing.
_If it encourages the students to indulge in such errors, on the flimsy grounds that lots of (lotsa) other people do so, it is not such a _good thing. _


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## mplsray

cuchuflete said:


> As we all seem to agree that _their's_ should be avoided in current English, because it is a misspelled word, we can settle back and consider that in non-standard arithmetic, 2 +2 = 5 does exist.  I'm sure a search engine will find numerous examples of that statement. It may even appear in publications by noted authors.  It should nonetheless be avoided.



Given "As we all seem to agree that _their's_ should be avoided in current English, because it is a misspelled word," the second part of your post seems superfluous.

But what you are doing, obviously, is trying to insult those who insist that _their's_ in not nonexistent in English. Your argument is defective, however. If there could be constructed a "nonstandard arithmetic" where 2 + 2 = 5 made sense, it could not, from what I know of mathematics, succeed as arithmetic in the same fashion as a nonstandard dialect could succeed as a standard dialect. It could not accomplish everything that arithmetic does, in the same way that a nonstandard dialect could accomplish everything that a standard dialect does--indeed, all languages now having a standard dialect got that dialect from a nonstandard one.

If English were exactly the same except that _your's, our's,_ and _their's_ were standard, communication would not suffer. The reason for using _their's_ in such a hypothetical world would be its status as a prestige spelling, part of the lingua franca of the educated classes. The reason we should use _theirs_ in our English is because it is the prestige spelling, part of the lingua franca of our educated classes.

In short, your analogy is a poor attempt at a poor argument (a strawman argument).

Note: The above represents a reply to a full post by *cuchuflete*, one which he has since expanded. His first paragraph nevertheless continues to represent a strawman argument, so I am leaving the above as is. I just want it to be understood that I am not accusing his entire post as it now stands as constituting a strawman argument.


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## mplsray

cuchuflete said:


> Or, add them to the pile of red herring in which _thairz_ sits in all its (it's?) {itz?} fetid splendor.



A red herring is intended to mislead. By replying to a post which accused _thairz _of being nonexistent in English by demonstrating its existence in a serious, published work on a spelling reform of the English language, I was misleading no one.


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## panjandrum

This thread has long since lost value as advice to those confused about theirs and their's.
If there is another topic, it is out of scope for this forum.
The thread has therefore been closed.


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