Marketing Communications. Write Right Tip #1: It's vs. Its
Posted on Mon, Feb 15, 2010
by Cathey Tarleton
It's distracting. And it is happening more and more. There you are, happily reading an interesting blog and its content is great, its style entertaining. Then, all of a sudden, ouch. It's like your eye gets stuck on that ornery little apostrophe with its hook between two letters and you have to stop for half a second. It's one of the most common errors in marketing communications, and it's not that hard to write right.
Who cares? What's the difference?
You care. And the difference is between saying what you want to say and saying something else. Between looking like an expert and--well--not.
To remember how to write right, remember this:
IT'S worth ITS weight in gold.
IT'S has the apostrophe. IT'S means "it is." The apostrophe indicates something is missing. In this case, the space and the letter "i" are both MIA. Maybe they ran off together, with the "n" and "o" from "can't." Let them go.
ITS doesn't or does not have an apostrophe. ITS means "belonging to IT." "ITS" indicates possession, which can be demonic or not.
I know, I know. "But, hey, apostrophe+s means possession. We learned that in 5th grade English." You're right, of course. That's usually true. Cathy's Clown, Hawaii's Big Island, the horse's mouth, my brother's keeper. But there are exceptions.
Some of the most confusing exceptions have to do with possessive pronouns: yours, ours, theirs, his, hers, my, mine and its. These don't or do not need the silly apostrophe. We know His & Hers from our bath towels. And we know what's mine is mine and not "mine's." Mine's" would mean "mine is." Like, for example, when the kids are fighting:
"That's not yours!"
"Yes it is! It's mine!"
"No, it's not. I can tell by its red color."
"Mine's red!"
"Hers is red!"
"No, his is red and yours is blue."
"It's mine!"
"It is mine!! Mine mine mine!"
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. For now, when you're trying to figure out whether to use IT'S or ITS, remember this sentence, "It's worth its weight in gold." IT's=IT IS. ITS=belonging to IT.
Write right.
Check out the first post in this series: Inbound marketing with a Blog. How to write right.