I suppose It is little brother and IT is BIG brother. Just kidding. Actually, I thought IT was too easily confused with plain old IT as commonly used to represent dumb information technology. The It conveys the idea better as the capital 'I' stands out in a sentence when writing about It instead of it. IT would be easily confused with IT.
It originally started because Jon Koplik was complaining about somebody using an apostrophe in it's [where it was not being used as the short form of it is]. So Jon Koplik was the original creator of It as a possessive noun [if that's the right grammar label - I'm useless and ignorant about grammar].
For some history, way back in 1980, I was moaning to our head office [BP Oil] that everything that couldn't be carried in a wheelbarrow should go via information technology, which I then called 'Infotech' for short, so I've been an It fan club member since way back then.
Going back even further, I first learned to fear but love It in the early 70s when typing punch cards in Fortran IV to solve engineering problems. The stupid computer, after making me wait a day or two to get time on it, would tell me "Error - line 4 missing parentheses". So I'd have to get the bit of cardboard out, retype, rebook, and the stupid computer would run the programme again. I thought then that the stupid computer should put a parentheses IN line 4 if it wanted one!
A bit like people use the word God but not GOD, we should probably go with the more modest It[TM]. At the beginning of sentences though, It would look the same as it. Which could be confusing.
Like some children, It might decide that It doesn't like the name It's stupid parents gave It and will change It's name by deed poll or simply adopt an alias.
Mqurice |
