This Cat Can’t Spell. It’s Time for Its Grammar Lesson
Another guide to a very common grammar error: confusing its and it’s.
This is one that used to confuse me. Both its and it’s are valid words. One is short for ‘it is’ and the other means ‘belonging to it.’ But which is which?
I struggled to get my head around this for ages. The contraction of ‘it is’ should take an apostrophe (that little thing like a comma up in the air), shouldn’t it, because as my English teacher at school old me, you use an apostrophe when you contact two words together and lose some of the letters. But she also told me that you use an apostrophe and an ‘s’ after a person to show something belongs to them – the possessive case to get technical. So surely ‘belonging to it’ should be written it’s too? Just like ‘the car belonging to John’ is written John’s car.
Wrong!
There’s a special group of words called the possessive adjectives, derived from pronouns like me, you, etc. We have:
my = belonging to me
your = belonging to you
his = belonging to him
her = belonging to her
We don’t write ‘him’s car’ do we? We write ‘his car.’ So these possessive adjectives don’t follow the rule about adding an apostrophe and an s.
When I finally understood this, it became clear. Its as in ‘belonging to it’ doesn’t take an apostrophe either.
So we have:
it’s = it is
its = belonging to it
If you can replace the it’s / its in the sentence with ‘it is’ and the sentence still makes sense, then use it’s. If you’re trying to show that something belong to ‘it’ (whatever it is!) then use plain old its, with no apostrophe.
And to help you remember, you can think of the title to this article: “It’s Time For Its Grammar Lesson” – it is time for the grammar lesson belonging to (intended for) it (the cat).
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February 16th, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Looks like nobody commented yet. I like this article
February 16th, 2011 at 2:46 pm
Well written article. It’s a good title . . .or should I say Its title is “cat”chy?
February 16th, 2011 at 4:57 pm
Yes, I had problems with this one too, until I finally nailed it. Now I hypersensitive to the misuse of its/it’s – sometimes I’m tempted to point out its misuse in comments on Facebook. I take a deep breath and calm down again – fixing that error is a full time job, although you’re playing your part with this article Bruce – you’ve explained it in a way that’s easy to understand.
February 16th, 2011 at 5:00 pm
Obviously I’m not hypersensitive to other errors in my own writing – forgetting the ‘m after I in the first line of my previous comment, oh dear!
February 16th, 2011 at 7:03 pm
THANK YOU, Bruce! Both articles were concise and brilliantly laid out for all (fingers crossed) to understand!!! Meow!
February 16th, 2011 at 10:58 pm
You tricked me.. this has nothing to do with cats!
February 17th, 2011 at 2:16 am
It’s another great article Bruce!
February 17th, 2011 at 2:20 am
okay a good writing lesson
February 17th, 2011 at 3:33 am
We all need reminding especially me! David.
February 17th, 2011 at 6:32 am
Thanks for clearing this up, it is one that I have had trouble with in the past.
February 17th, 2011 at 9:08 am
Do “their, they’re and there” next…These grammar lessons/reviews are fun!
February 26th, 2011 at 7:52 am
Yes I’ve had fun with that one… now if you could just explain correct use of semi colon, when to use apostrophe’s and when not, when to use colon, what words require hyphens… lol. We could be here some time.