A guest post – the first of a regular series on grammar, punctuation and spelling issues – by Katherine Ploeger.
One of the most frequent errors made with homonyms (words that sound the same but are spelled differently and mean different things) is the issue of using it’s and its.
IT’S
It’s is the contraction for it is. The apostrophe indicates a missing letter, in this case the i in is.
For example, “It’s going to be a lovely day today.” You could also write it as, “It is going to be a lovely day today” if you don’t like contractions. Both sentences express the same idea.
When you are editing your writing and come across a usage of it’s, in your mind unpack the contraction, saying the two words (it is) and make sure those words make sense in your sentence. If the words don’t make sense, you probably meant to use the possessive, its.
ITS
Its is the possessive for It. When using possessive pronouns (a pronoun expressing possession), don’t use the apostrophe, as that would duplicate its use with contractions.
Here is a list of possessive pronouns: My, mine, his, hers, its, our, ours, their, theirs, your, yours, whose.
For example, “Its propeller failed to work due to a crack in the mechanism.” You could replace Its with the noun it refers to: the airplane, written as “the airplane’s…).
When you are editing your writing and come across its, make sure you read it as a possessive.
Katherine Ploeger, MA, MFA, is a former college English professor (of writing) with 15 years teaching experience. She writes and publishes the Common Writing Errors Workbook, which offers instruction and exercises about more than 40 writing issues. Use the workbook to enhance your writing quality and step up your editing skills. Go to Quilliful Publications for more details and other publications for writers. She also offers a bunch of free information at her blog. Check them both out if you want to improve your writing skills and processes. Photo by justmakeit via Flickr.Related posts:
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