Confusing “its” and “it’s” is a common mistake. “Its” is a possessive adjective, while “it’s” is a contraction of “it is” or “it has”. An apostrophe is used for contractions, but not for possessives. To avoid confusion, check if “is” can be substituted with “is” or “has”.
A common mistake, and one that drives teachers of all levels crazy, is the mixing up of the words “is” and “is.” While the difference may not seem significant to the average writer, using words correctly can help you appear smarter and more educated. Many people form their first impression just by reading someone’s writing, so you want your writing to be as accurate as possible.
“Its” is a possessive adjective – sometimes also considered a possessive pronoun – meaning “belonging to it”. The confusion arises because if you don’t substitute the pronoun “it” for the noun, an apostrophe is used. For example, the bone belonging to the dog is “the dog’s bone”. The eraser on the pencil is “the eraser of the pencil”. Both examples use an apostrophe plus an “s” to attribute ownership.
When “it” is used instead of the noun, however, the apostrophe is no longer used. Instead of “a rabbit’s cage,” you could say “its cage.” Instead of “the window of the house”, you would say “its window”. This tends to confuse people who are used to apostrophes denoting possessives. Other examples of the possessive “his” might include the dog burying his bone in his yard and the table with a broken leg and its tablecloth that needs ironing.
“It’s” is a contraction. A contraction is when a new word is formed from two or more separate words. In English, an apostrophe is used to recognize missing letters. “Don’t” is a contraction of “don’t” and “shouldn’t” is a contraction of “shouldn’t”. “It’s” is short for “it is” or, less frequently, for “it has”.
Whenever “is” includes an apostrophe, the writer should be able to substitute “is” or “has” and still make sense of the sentence. “Tomorrow will be my birthday” is correct because it can be changed to “Tomorrow will be my birthday”. “It’s been two hours since I ate” can be verified since changing it to “It’s been two hours since I ate” is still correct.
Therefore, it’s easy to confuse the two words, because English doesn’t always follow its own rules!
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