An easy one

It's Monday morning. You're cranky. Me, too. Let's all take a look at this picture and talk about it.

Photo by AW, from "Lost Girl"

This comes to us from my friend AW. Captions are tough because they aren't always generated by a human. And sometimes, when they are, they're done on the fly VERY quickly. And I hate to beat up on anyone that's trying to get things done that quickly, because perhaps these tapes arrived at the captioning facility a little later than they should have. Anyway, point is, I don't usually roll with a caption post, because there are too many variables. However, who's vs. whose is tough for me, and I wondered what you thought. I have been known to completely rewrite a sentence just to avoid choosing between the two. For some reason, the rule never gets stuck in my head. And it's an easy one--basically the same as its vs. it's. Whose is the possessive. Who's is a contraction of who is. So, if it can be replaced with who is or who has, use the contraction. If not, use whose.

See? Easy peasy. Do you know of any other tricks that can simplify some of our more confusing rules? Please share!

(Thanks, AW!)