(Forgive my grammar nazism.) The possessive form of "it" is "its": "The dog wagged its tail". But for basically everything other than pronouns and plurals, the possessive form involves adding "apostrophe s". In recent years, many people have tried to apply this rule to "it". But the problem is that "it's" is understood to be a contraction of "it is" or "it has"; furthermore, "its" already exists as the standard possessive form.
One thing I say to people using "it's" is that by analogy, you also need to say: "He got he's skills. She missed she's ride. They have they's meeting."
"Its" is a possessive pronoun like his/her/their/our/whose. "It's" is a contraction of "it is", hence the apostrophe. Any time you could grammatically say his/her/their, you should use the version without the apostrophe. Any time you could say "it is", you should use the version with.
Mmh, not really. "Its" is consistent with other possessive pronouns like "his" and "hers". "It's" is consistent with other contractions, where letters are removed ("it is" or "it has").
In this particular case 'it's' can also be possessive although it's considered non-standard, so to be correct you can always treat it like a contraction of 'it is'.
I think “it’s” is confusing because adding apostrophe-s to a noun is normally how you make a noun possessive, so it can seem logical to do the same to the word ‘it’.
Usually, -'s can mean either singular possessive or a contraction for "- is."
"It," however, is a special case. "Its" is possessive, and "It's" is reserved only for the contraction of the phrase "It is."
That's because "Tom's" is possessive in this case. The possessive form of "it" is "its" (no apostrophe). The way I remember it: if you can substitute "his" or "hers" for "its", then don't use an apostrophe.
The brain is an incredible pattern recognition machine.
The regular form of possessive is 's. That is, when it's right to add an s to a noun indicate possession we add an apostrophe. This is more regular than a lot of english rules. So now there are pronouns. They are a bit weird, carrying some strange stuff from germanic languages about changing the word based on the case (sometimes). For the most part, it's pretty straightforward still.
Now we get to the word its. Yeah, it's a pronoun, but it follows the possessive pattern of adding an s. So 'it' follows the pronoun pattern of changing the word, but it also phonetically follows the regular noun pattern of adding an s.
In this one special case, there are two patterns being followed at the same time. Except not really, because unlike all the other cases where the s is appended for possession, we don't mark it different.
This is of course because there is a form of the phonetic 'its', which is spelled "it's" . This word is very similar to its, but it really is a contraction (a special word that actually means two words, but we're lazy and drop some of letters from the second word) in this case, "it's" is ("it's"'s :) ) short for it is. That phrase of course is not about possession, but it does describe a quality possessed by the thing referred to by "it".
Of course on top of all this, we have yet another use in english for the 's construct. It is related to the "it's", because it not only denotes possession, but also denotes a contraction with is, or with has (which itself is a completely different rant - have and is are arbitrarily used in all sorts of languages) like described above for it's , but more generally.
That means the the sentence:
Bob's going to Bob's house.
Is a correct way of using the 's in two different meanings...
Bob is going to the house Bob owns.
Yet, if was talking about a robot...
Robot is going home. Its house has its charger and it's going to plug in.
So yeah, English is super duper easy! I mean, how hard is it for our pattern matching machines to not realize that contracting with is means 's, that possession which is phonetically an s sound is spelled 's, and pronouns use different words for different cases, these are all pretty regular occurrances, EXCEPT when talking about spelling the pronoun its, which despite its appearance and phonetics of being a pronoun that follows noun rules, is actually a separate word arbitrarily. I mean, who would ever get confused by the 's pattern not applying in this one case? It's a special case of a special case and should be extremely obvious.
It's true, but it seems orthographically inconsistent with other possessive forms; after all, "John's" can be a contraction for "John is," or it can be the possessive form of the name "John." By analogy, one might think that "it's" can also take on both meanings, but that's not the case.
I think OP was just being an ass, but whether the behavior is opposite really depends on your frame of reference. The lack of apostrophe is consistent with how you deal with possessive pronouns: his, her/hers, our/ours, etc. No possessive pronouns have apostrophes, with one exception. And the apostrophe is consistent with how other contractions work.
If you remember (and care) that its and it's are two separate words, then you should be able think your way through it. It's could legitimately be possessive or a contraction, but its can only be the possessive.
Anyway, I agree with you that it's tricky enough that we shouldn't be assholes about it.
Probably because of weird rules like "children's room" and "four cows' pasture", then the contrary notion that "it's" is incorrect for possessive form because "it is" already used for a contraction of "it is". English sucks.
Possessives were the weird ones for me. I learned French at an early age, and you were just expected to learn the possessive pronouns. I did the same for English and while `it's` and `its` are similar, I've always considered the latter as its own thing, not something extrapolated from using the apostrophe as a possessive in English.
The problem with this one is that at one point in the English language's history (17th/18th century I believe), the correct possessive form of "it" was "it's", which is arguably more correct^.
^You make nouns possessive by adding a saxon genitive to signify the distinct possessive-izing "s" sound. The word "it" is also made possessive with this same sound when spoken, but for the sake of a contraction (read: abomination ;)), we have decided to arbitrarily remove the saxon genitive and replace it with a simple "s". The excuse for this inconsistency is "well it is a pronoun, not a noun, so this is not an inconsistency" does not take into account that English is a language primarily spoken. Written English, where reasonably possible, should approximate the spoken constructs.
Demonstration:
He stepped on the cat*'*s tail.
He stepped on its tail.
Notice that although these two sentences are expressing the same idea and are of the same approximate form (they would be spoken similarly), the second has dropped the saxon genitive. This is clearly, if you look at it ignoring what you were taught in primary school thanks to Webster worship, an absurd change.
At the very least, people who use saxon genitives with the word "it" do not deserve the ridicule people like to heap on them. "it's"/"its" is not a "there"/"their"/"they're" scenario.
One thing I say to people using "it's" is that by analogy, you also need to say: "He got he's skills. She missed she's ride. They have they's meeting."
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