Its vs. It's

Its  vs.  It's

The Final Battle  

     Hello world, this is Angry Tofu speaking. Today, I bring a message to all English speakers: a message of peace. As all of you know, or maybe don't know, for many years the two words "its" and "it's" have been waging war against each other. They are always trying to replace each other in sentences, when what they don't seem to realize is that they have different meanings entirely. There is no need to quarrel! These two words can coexist, and here I will show you how. 

ITS:

     This word is the possessive form of the pronoun "it". It is used when something belongs to "it".

For example:

     Henry stole the raccoon's garbage.

If we want to replace "the raccoon" with "it", we say:

     Henry stole its* garbage. 

*Note the lack of an apostrophe

This is a confusing grammar point for most people. This is because most possessive nouns are formed by adding an apostrophe + s onto the end of a noun, like this:

     That book belongs to Martha.

     That is Martha's book. 

However, when you are making a possessive pronoun out of "it", then you just don't follow that rule. Memorize it.

IT'S:

Now for contractions! "It's" is a contraction (or combination) of the two words "it" and "is". Here is how to use it:

     The Chrysler Building is quite tall.

Now, replace "The Chrysler Building is" with

     It's quite tall. 

See? It's quite simple (tee hee, see what I did there?).

     So now you have absolutely no excuse for ever mixing up these two words. Actually, I can think of one reason that you would be allowed to, which is if you had to pen a peace treaty between two nations in five minutes before they aimed nuclear bombs at each other. That is the only reason.

Now have a good day.