To be fair, in most other nouns, adding an apostrophe and an s at the end can both be short for "is" and signify the possessive form (e.g., "Tim's a jerk" means "Tim is a jerk," but "Tim's house" means the house Tim lives in).
By analogy, it makes sense for "it's" to both mean the possessive form and to be short for "it is," but instead we spell the possessive form as "its." Since the difference is only in writing, not pronunciation, it makes sense for a native speaker to forget it.
I see the same mistake with "who's" and "whose." The latter is the possessive form (e.g. "Whose phone is this?") and the former is a contraction of "who is" (e.g., "The only kid who's sitting quietly"). I see people write "who's" instead of "whose," for probably the same reason, since relative pronouns also replace normal nouns. Here's a comparison with the word order changed to make it obvious ("who" replaces "Mom" here):
This phone is Mom's.
This phone is who's/whose?
I know the normal word order is "Whose phone is this?" though.
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.
Ah, that is a great point. Of course you know I meant that the rule of not apostrophizing its is backwards from the more common case of personal pronouns. Okay, so the possessive pronouns don’t use apostrophes and personal pronouns do. And its and whose are possessive pronouns, or possessive determiners. Is that the whole apostrophe rule? Are there any other cases or exceptions for possession? Do all indefinite pronouns use apostrophes, e.g., it’s anybody’s guess?
"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.
> Is it really that difficult to remember that the apostrophe in it's (for instance), is always without exception used as an abbreviation for 'it is' or 'it has', not an indication of possession and thus your's is wrong.
From someone who had issues with this for years, just parroting the rule as you did doesn't help, it only made sense after learning the reason why: the possessive form "its" is grouped with "his" and "hers", not "vixen99's" and "Izkata's".
You don't add an “s” to other pronouns to make them possessive; “it” is unusual (unique, I believe) in that it both adds an “s” and does not take an apostrophe; nouns generally do both, pronouns generally do neither.
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.
I'm not a native English speaker and the fact that this is such a common error among native speakers baffles me because the rules that govern these things are very simple. Conventions about when to omit the 's' after the apostrophe differ from one set of guidelines to another (see e.g. https://www.dailywritingtips.com/possessive-of-proper-names-... ), but that's the only non-uniform thing about it.
There's nothing weird about "it's" being incorrect. Pronouns have their own possessive forms. You say her keyboard is white, not she's keyboard is white, and his shirt is yellow, not he's shirt is yellow -- why would you say it's collar is white?
You guys have no idea how easy English is, you should be happy about it and love it and cherish it forever! My native language has a phonetic alphabet, so it's easier to figure out how to pronounce words (i.e. no "lead men in battle" vs "the pipes are made of lead" bullshit). But forming possessives for plurals is waaaay more complicated than "add 's, except if the noun already has an s at the end".
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.
I think that the mistake is common because it is triggered by a language irregularity. Normally in English, 's indicates a possessive. By that logic, something that belongs to "it" should be "it's", just as something that belongs to John is "John's". But no, we spell the possessive pronoun "its".
And I've often seen autocorrect try to turn a correct "its" into an incorrect "it's" or vice versa.
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’.
You are correct, in the case of "it's" the apostrophe doesn't indicate possession, but rather a contraction of 'it is'. I think it is a confusing edge case, which English has many of.
Hah yea, this is a particularly nasty part of the language IMO. I was wrestling with it recently. For pronouns, the apostrophe is only to indicate a contraction. Possessive pronouns like "hers" do not use an apostrophe. So "it's" always means "it is." Where "its" always is expressing that "it" possesses something.
(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."
I just remember that (possessive) pronouns don't have apostrophes. "My", "your", "his", "her", "their", and "our" don't have apostrophes, so why would "its"?
Meanwhile, contractions do have apostrophes. "Haven't", "should've", "that's", "you're", and "I'll" have apostrophes, so "it's" (meaning "it is" or "it has") should too.
If you can't substitute it for "it is" without it sounding weird, then you don't need the apostrophe. It was hard for me too when dealing with possessive words which usually have the apostrophe.
As a rule of thumb, if you attach "'s" to something ending with an "s", only attach the apostrophe. But there's no problem if you do it wrong, it's just a stylistic convention to reflect the phonetics.
And for plural "s": if the word normally ends in a "s" or "sh" or "z" sound (or possibly even "zh", i.e. the "j" in French "je") add an "es" instead of "s". Some words are irregular but irregular words by definition don't follow the rules.
The real confusion comes with possessive pronouns. It is "the boy's pet" but it is "his pet" (not #"he's pet"). They're not nouns (they're pro-nouns, i.e. something that is used instead of a noun) so the apostrophe-s rule doesn't apply to them, they just take on special forms.
The confusion really just stems from English regularly allowing contractions like "-'s"/"-'" for "is" and "-n't"/"-'t" for "not" or "-'d" for "would". Pronouns can have contractions as suffixes (e.g. "he's" for "he is" or "he'd" for "he would") but nouns normally can't (#"the boy'd" isn't normally permissible, at least not in writing).
It gets even worse if you consider that whether words can only be contracted additionally depends on their pronunciation (and role) within the sentence. You can't answer the question "Is he dead?" with #"He's.", for example.
Oh, and I haven't even touched upon similar-sounding but entirely different things like "their" vs "they're" -- and I even caught myself accidentally mixing them up while writing this comment.
By analogy, it makes sense for "it's" to both mean the possessive form and to be short for "it is," but instead we spell the possessive form as "its." Since the difference is only in writing, not pronunciation, it makes sense for a native speaker to forget it.
I see the same mistake with "who's" and "whose." The latter is the possessive form (e.g. "Whose phone is this?") and the former is a contraction of "who is" (e.g., "The only kid who's sitting quietly"). I see people write "who's" instead of "whose," for probably the same reason, since relative pronouns also replace normal nouns. Here's a comparison with the word order changed to make it obvious ("who" replaces "Mom" here):
I know the normal word order is "Whose phone is this?" though.reply