The "its" is wrong

Cristina said the " its' " on this sign is "driving me crazy every day on my way to work", and when I saw the picture (which isn't completely clear because she took it with her cell phone), I just had to post it here.

Dear historical sign people: if it's possessive, it's supposed to be ITS (ie, no apostrophe)!

Dashes instead

I used to be very conscientious in my use of semicolons--I knew the rules and applied them correctly. But then I took a creative writing class, where the teacher said that he didn't like using them so much, and I started using dashes instead, first in my creative writing (which hasn't been published, btw), and then in emails and here in this blog. At this point, I'm so used to using dashes instead of semicolons, my use of them has been limited to formal writing, which I really don't do that much, since a lot of my writing is via online communication and quick notes.

So now I'm wondering if semicolons are being used less, for stylistic reasons and because people don't know how they're supposed to be used.

Capitalization rules for academic degrees

An ESL student asked me what the capitalization rules are for academic degrees. I couldn't find the answer in any of my books, so I looked online, and found a pretty decent answer at the University of Tampa site. Here are a couple of examples:

"He has a bachelor's degree in English, a master's in translation, and a doctorate in comparative literature."
(Note that none of them are capitalized.)

"Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science"
(Note that they are capitalized.)

The site also has some other helpful examples, though keep in mind that it's the standardization they've chosen, which may not be true for other organizations.