It's vs Its! What is The Correct Usage in English?
Since the majority of Steemians put so much time into writing English here, we inevitably find that we use the words It's and Its regularly - but there are misunderstood rules about the use of these words which I also get confused by sometimes - so I took a refresher course!
The short answer to the question "Which do I use out of It's and Its?" is that if the use of the word is done in a way that means there are letters that have been removed then we use the apostrophe version of It's. For example, the phrase "it is" can be shortened to "It's" and the apostrophe denotes that the second letter "i" has been removed. This is the only situation where an apostrophe is used with "Its".
The confusion arises because the other usage of "Its" denotes possession or ownership - for example, "The boat sank because its hull fractured" is a correct use of the word "its" because there is no missing letter or conjunction of words - the "its" only refers to possession of the hull by the boat (The hull is part of the boat and in English, perhaps confusingly, this is classed as possession). Since there are many forms of possession in language which DO involve the removal of a letter, such as where we convert "It has" into "It's", we tend to make the mistake of assuming that all forms of possession require an apostrophe, when they do not.
The memory I left school with of this was actually wrong, so I have no doubt written countless posts where my use of its was wrong too!
Maybe this will help improve our communication a tiny bit!? :)
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
Vote @ura-soul for Steem Witness!
View My Witness Application Here
(Witnesses are the computer servers that run the Steem Blockchain.
Without witnesses there is no Steem, Steemit, DTube, Utopian or
Busy... You can really help Steem by making your 30 witness votes count!
Don't forget, there are more than the 50 witnesses you see on the witness voting page in steemit.com)
Proud to not confuse them although I am not a native English speaker. There are though some grammar tricks similar to your example that trick me.
Some of the ones making this mistake on Steemit might be doing that due to a lack of attention when writing their articles with speed of light, but that doesn't affect them that much if they have some constant upvoters that don't even read their articles.
For the rest of us is grammar that eats us alive.
Its grammars fault that it's that hard to get in the mouth of a whale :)
Wow this has been a thing of confusion to many. You know, English might seem on the outside, one of the easiest subjects but it is indeed the most difficult because if its complexity.
There are so many other words in English that gets people confused a lot and it's usage gave intertwined a number of times. We have a word like being and been. I knkw how long it took me before I could differentiate the two and use them properly in sentences.
You’re actually right, I does confuse myself with these words and now you clarified them, thanks for enlightening
Yeah..a tiny bit but it was a good one. Thanks!
Most times we choose the one closest on the keyboard suggested words...Lol
keep steeming
It can be confusing but I think mostly the mistakes in the use of it's and its are due to autocorrect
Its vs It's is always tough to decide. English has a lot of exceptions to its rules.
i think since you encouraging others to be grammatically correct, it may worthwhile to proof-read your article for grammatical errors. the first line itself should have been "Since majority of Steemians spend so much time writing in English here, ... "
a) may be people making the mistake you have states aren't native english speakers.
b) may be people are lazy about putting an ' between t & s.
c) may be they don't know, in which case they will be grateful to you.
If we are going to be accurate:
Should be:
;)
Your version:
has a missing 'the' in it:
Your choice of inserting the word 'in' is not wrong, but at the same time my choice to just say 'writing English' is not wrong either (at least to me). My version is just a bit quicker to type.
ouch!
i didn't realize i was messing with a whale. and i was reading another article from you about reaching level 70 (congrats btw). and then i saw the above response from you, and was wondering why are you replying to this.. only to realize the original article was from you as well.
Yeah..a tiny bit but it was a good one. Thanks!
Most times we choose the one closest on the keyboard suggested words...Lol
keep steeming
Try this explanation.
http://www.businesswritingblog.com/business_writing/2006/05/its_its_or_its_.html
It's good that you took the time to understand the difference. There are too many people mixing up "it's" and "its". Also, there are lots of mistakes on the Internet on using the wrong "to". There are three "to"s. Two, to and too. Often, the people don't seem to get the difference. Mobile postings makes things worse with the virtual keyboard and autocorrections.