IT'S vs ITS - Trick to remember the difference - Lots of examples
Some grammar mistakes are surprisingly frequent even among educated native speakers of English. When it comes to written English, a lot of these mistakes involve words or phrases that sound the same but are spelled differ Unfortunately, if you make this kind of mistake, you run the risk of making a really bad impression with your writing. But luckily, some of these mistakes are really easy to fix if you just know what to look for.
One of the most notorious of these grammatical mistakes is when people write the wrong form of ITS / IT’s. That’s what my video will explain in detail with lots of examples today.
It’s or Its?
Use IT’s when you mean “IT IS”.
--- Hey, it’s raining!
Use IT’s when you mean “IT HAS”.
--- Yeah, It’s been raining for two hours already.
Use ITS when you mean “of or belonging to it”.
ITS has no apostrophe, it’s spelled I-T-S, and is the possessive determiner used to designate animals and things.
It’s and its are among the most commonly confused words. They are pronounced the same, there’s a very small difference in how they’re written, and it’s also easy to mistake the contraction in it’s for a possessive. But the rules are very clear—it’s is the same type of contraction as “where’s” or “there’s,” and its is a possessive just like “my” or “your.”
Examples
He doesn’t think its a good idea to spend all his money on video games.
He doesn’t think it’s a good idea to spend all his money on video games.
Its been a year since the last time they met.
It’s been a year since the last time they met.
The computer looked as though it’s power supply had failed.
The computer looked as though its power supply had failed.
A car is no good without it’s wheels.
A car is no good without its wheels.