Grammar Police: It Forms (Its and It’s)
June 30, 2009 by Allison Boyer
Filed under Jobs
It’s hard to remember when to use its and when to use it’s. One means it is or it has and the other make it possessive. But which one is which?
The Grammar Police force has its own typo-sniffing dogs. Image: sxc.hu
- It’s should be used to refer to it is or it has. It’s a contraction.
- Its should be used as a possessive form of it. Its lack of apostrophe is important.
How can you remember this? It can be tricky. Here’s how I do it:
It’s (it is or it has) uses an apostrophe. In contractions like don’t and can’t use the apostrophe to replace a letter. The same is true for it’s. If you’re writing the word to mean it is or it has, you’re replacing a letter with an apostrophe. When you’re making it possessive, you’re not replacing any letters.
You can see other Grammar Police posts by heading to this page.
Hi Allison, I’m enjoying your Grammar Police series. There’s a typo in your photo caption today though, and in your tags for yesterday’s article.
Thanks, Debra – I had caught it and updated a split second after hitting the publish button, so you must have been lucky enough to see it for that small blip of time! (I include some purpose typos in the tags sometimes based on how people are searching, since people search use words that aren’t spelled correctly – ironic, I know, that people would search using “grammer”).
Thanks Allison, and glad you caught the typo. Sad that you have to misspell tags so people can find your articles, but it’s for a good cause. ;-)