Miss Hasler's English Class: 3

Eyes on the board, please. In today’s lesson we are going to look at two little words that are often misused: its and it’s. Mixing these two up is a common mistake, but it’s one that I am going to ensure you never make again. Here are two examples of incorrect usage:

Spain is famous for it’s sunshine.
I don’t mind pizza, but its not my favourite.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! Any pupil handing work in with these errors would get lines. But why are they errors? Because they use its and it’s the wrong way round.

Let’s start at the start by examining it’s.

It’s is a contraction – that is, a shortened version – of ‘it is’ or ‘it has’, just as that’s = ‘that is’ and let’s = ‘let us’.

Shortening ‘it is’ or ‘it has’ is always what it’s is used for; it has no other use.

As with other contractions, we use an apostrophe to stand in for the letter(s) we take out. So when we take the second ‘i’ out of ‘it is’ we put an apostrophe in its place and push the two words together. It is becomes it’s.

It is a sunny day.
It’s a sunny day.

And, going back to our example above:

I don’t mind pizza, but it is not my favourite.
I don’t mind pizza, but it’s not my favourite.

The more observant of you will have noticed that this example contains another contraction that works in just the same way as it’s:

I don’t mind pizza = I do not mind pizza. We take the ‘o’ out of ‘not’, replace it with an apostrophe, and push the two words together.

I do not mind pizza.
I don’t mind pizza.

See? Easy!

Now, pay close attention – that includes you, Harry – because I am going to talk about its, which is a trickier thing to understand than it’s.

Its serves a different function to it’s: it is a possessive determiner.

I see a hand up. Yes, Dana? What is a possessive determiner? It’s a part of speech that modifies a noun (specifically, a personal pronoun) by attributing possession.

Now... yes, Dana? What is a personal pronoun? It’s a special kind of naming word. Examples are me or you or him or her. We all know that nouns are naming words, don’t we? Table and penguin and France are nouns. So are Penny and car and lollipop. Well, personal pronouns are just a special little group of nouns that can be used to stand in for the names of people or things, basically to avoid repetition.

Here’s an example sentence that uses a personal pronoun:

John is my friend. I like him.

In this sentence, him is the personal pronoun, and it stands in for John. The sentence could be written as “John is my friend. I like John,” but we use him instead of repeating John to make the sentence sound less repetitive.

The other personal pronouns are I, you, me, her, it, he, she, us, they and them. So instead of writing “I went to Disneyland. I liked Disneyland,” you could write “I went to Disneyland. I liked it.” Or, instead of writing “Mary likes cheesecake. Mary ate some just yesterday,” you could write “Mary likes cheesecake. She ate some just yesterday.”

Do you all see how that works? Personal pronouns stand in for nouns. John/him, Disneyland/it, Mary/she, noun/personal pronoun. I bet you use them all the time!

Now that we know what a personal pronoun is, we can tackle possessive determiners. If you remember, we said that these words attribute possession. That is to say, they tell us that something belongs to someone or something. And we use them when we need to do that with a personal pronoun. Each personal pronoun (e.g. he, she, you, it) has a possessive determiner that corresponds to it. Let’s look at some examples.

You have a car. You is a personal pronoun.
Your car is nice. Your is the possessive determiner that corresponds to you.
He put me over his knee! This sentence contains both a personal pronoun (he) and the corresponding possessive determiner (his).

You/your, he/his, she/her, we/our. See? Not really hard at all. Personal pronoun, corresponding possessive determiner.

Now we’re ready to deal with that pesky its.

Its is simply the corresponding possessive determiner to it, just like your is to you, his is to he and her is to she.

Your eyes, his voice, her dress, its coastline.

Not “it’s coastline,” because we’re not saying “it is coastline” or “it has coastline.” We’re attributing possession of the coastline to the personal pronoun it.

An example sentence: “Norway is hard to draw in crayon. Its coastline is very jaggedy.” This sentence works exactly the same as “Rachel came back from the salon. Her hair looked amazing.”

Norway - it - its
Rachel - she - her
Noun - personal pronoun - possessive determiner

There. Not so tricky really, is it?

I think some of the confusion regarding possession and apostrophes comes from the fact that, when we attribute possession to a plain old noun (as opposed to a personal pronoun), we do use an apostrophe:

The car has a sunroof = the car’s sunroof.
Crystal has a cat = Crystal’s cat.

So why don’t we add an apostrophe to possessive determiners when we want to signify possession? We add them to nouns, after all. Because, unlike nouns, possessive determiners (his, her, its) already have possession built into them. They have it built in because signifying possession is their one and only function:

Crystal’s cat (apostrophe)
Her cat (no apostrophe)

The car’s sunroof (apostrophe)
Its sunroof (no apostrophe)

Daniel’s bottom (apostrophe)
His bottom (no apostrophe)

See? Good. Now, there is just one more thing. Julie, don’t bang your head on the desk, dear. The final things to mention are possessive pronouns. These are the words yours, mine, his (again), hers and ours. Just like possessive determiners, these words don’t need apostrophes as they already have the concept of possession built in:

That hat is Andrea’s (apostrophe)
That hat is hers (no apostrophe)

We don’t need to worry about the distinction between possessive determiners and possessive pronouns. Life is too short for that. And I know that I’ve used a lot of terminology today, but it isn’t essential to remember all those things. Just remember that:

It’s is a contraction of it is or it has. That’s why it always has an apostrophe, to stand in for the letter(s) we have taken out.

Possessive determiners (words like his, her, its) and possessive pronouns (words like hers, ours, yours) never have apostrophes in them, because they don’t need them. You wouldn’t write “hi’s” when you meant “his,” would you? So don’t write “it’s” when you mean “its!”

Homework
Write a paragraph about a girl who goes to the park. Try to use it’s and its, as well as other contractions (like don’t), personal pronouns (like she) and possessive determiners (like his).

P.S. The gorgeous picture above is taken from the ever-sexy School Mistress Fantasy.