There's a typo in the United States Constitution

[xiphias]

Really.

Article I, Section 10 includes the phrase "except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws". The superfluous apostrophe appears in both the handwritten and early printed texts.

How embarrassing.

Comments

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

If the Constitution were written today, that would be a typo. In 1789, it wasn't. Until sometime in the 19th century, "it's" was the possessive form, because "'tis" was still in common usage as a contraction of "it is."

Read more here.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

Before anyone responds to tell me this: yes, I realize the Constitution was signed in 1787. I'm used to thinking about the U.S. government in terms of when Washington took office, not when the document was actually signed.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

But everywhere ELSE in the Constitution it's "its". Dozens of times.

[mattblum.livejournal.com]

True. And further investigation has uncovered two articles about the Constitution's issues with spelling and such, the first of which specifically mentions the very issue you raise. I still would contend that that, even if that would have been considered an error in 1787, it would surely not have been considered as clear a mistake as it would be today.

[brooksmoses]

I didn't believe you, and so I went off to the Oxford English Dictionary for a definitive answer. You are more right than I wished to believe, but you do overstate your case -- from 1598 (the first citation) to the early 1800s, versions with and without the apostrophe are about equally common.

I found their discussion of its origins fascinating, so I quote:

The original genitive or possessive neuter was his, as in the masc., which continued in literary use till the 17th c. But with the gradual substitution of sex for grammatical gender in the concord of the pronouns, the indiscriminate use of his for male beings and for inferior animals and things without life began to be felt inappropriate, and already in the ME. period its neuter use was often avoided, substitutes being found in thereof, of it, the, and in N.W. dialect, the genitive use of hit, it, which became very common about 1600, and is still retained in Westmorland, Lancashire, S.W. Yorkshire, Cheshire, Lincolnshire, and adjacent counties. Finally, it's arose, apparently in the south of England (London, Oxford), and appears in books just before 1600. It had no doubt been colloquial for some time previous, and only gradually attained to literary recognition. Its was not admitted in the Bible of 1611 (which has thereof, besides the his, her, of old grammatical gender); the possessive it occurs once (Lev. xxv. 5), but was altered (in an edition of 1660) to its, which appears in all current editions. Its does not appear in any of the works of Shakespeare published during his life-time (in which and the first folio the possessive it occurs 15 times), but there are 9 examples of it's, and 1 of its, in the plays first printed in the folio of 1623.

[brooksmoses]

It occurs to me to suddenly wonder what parallels there might be between environment that led to the rather sudden appearance of "its" to replace "his" and the locutions used to avoid using a gendered pronoun for a non-gendered thing, and the apparent need for a gender-neutral pronoun for people now.

[ailbhe]

It wasn't an obsolete spelling of the possessive until the late 19th century. Me and my OED looked this up for a persistent offender some years ago.

It's sad that they weren't consistent, but not unusual.