These three little letters cause a lot of confusion and it’s well worth it to spend a few minutes to know the difference between the two words. The pesky apostrophe is to blame in most cases of misuse. The apostrophe is a tricky punctuation mark in English, it’s difficult to remember all of its uses!
An apostrophe is that little punctuation mark at or near the end of a word that makes a noun possessive or helps to form a contraction. A contraction is a combination of two words, with an apostrophe taking the place of the letter or letters that have been omitted.
It’s is the contraction (abbreviated form) of “it is” and “it has.” It’s has no other meanings other than as an informal substitute for “it is” or “it has.” Contractions in writing are used for brevity and when writing informally. Personally, my style of writing doesn’t include many contractions as the written word, in my opinion, deserves to have words be completely spelled out in their entirety, it feels like slang to me otherwise. Slang has its (see the possessive form used here) place but it is more the exception than the rule which could be another blog topic itself.
Its is a possessive form; that is, it shows ownership. Its is used to show possession of singular objects and entities. Possessive pronouns always need a direct object. One way to double check that you need the possessive use is to re-read the sentence, saying “it is” wherever you’ve placed “its.” For example, does it make sense to say, “The bird is in “it is” house”? Nope. That’s how you’ll know to remove the apostrophe.
Its’ is never correct but often mistakenly creeps into writing. Apostrophes can and do show possession, but not necessarily with pronouns. Possessive pronouns do not have apostrophes. That is because their spelling already indicates a possessive. For example, the possessive form of she is hers. The possessive form of we is ours. Because we change the spelling, there is no need to add an apostrophe to show possession; its follows that pattern.
It’s and its have different meanings, and confusing them can make writing look sloppy. People often form first impressions simply by reading our writing. You take the chance of losing credibility and you might be viewed as less capable when you make grammatical, spelling or punctuation errors. So take a minute or two and check for potential issues with it’s vs. its, there vs. they’re, and other more common mistakes where the apostrophe can wreak havoc.