When to use its and when to use it's


Gamer Life General Discussion

Sovereign Court

Help me out here, a non-native English speaker. It always confused me, so i tend to use it's only when referring to something's posession of something else. And its in any other time.


Unfortunately, you have it backwards, its/it's are different from the norm.

"Its" is the possessive form of the word it, whereas "it's" is a contraction meaning "it is".

"It is a shame that the creature's possessions are broken." can be re-written correctly as "It's a shame that its possessions are broken".

Sovereign Court

Great. Made myself look the fool. Ah well, thank you.


Hama wrote:
Help me out here, a non-native English speaker. It always confused me, so i tend to use it's only when referring to something's posession of something else. And its in any other time.

"It's" is a contraction of "it is". That's the only time it should be used.

The possessive would be "its".

Yes, this is an exception to the basic rule of forming the possessive by adding an "'s". English is weird like that.

Honestly, I suspect this one is on the way out. Like so many irregular bits of the language in the past. I won't be really sorry to see this one go. Though it probably won't be complete in my lifetime.


When it doubt, replace your one word with 'it is.' If the resulting sentence makes sense, use 'it's.' Otherwise, save yourself the apostrophe.

thejeff wrote:


Honestly, I suspect this one is on the way out. Like so many irregular bits of the language in the past. I won't be really sorry to see this one go. Though it probably won't be complete in my lifetime.

Neither will I, along with a lot of other 'charming' English idiosyncrasies.


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Hama wrote:
Great. Made myself look the fool. Ah well, thank you.

As someone who *only* communicates in English, any piffling mistakes you make put you way ahead of me in the linguistics department.

Silver Crusade

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Look at the apple, it's falling.

Then let us look upon the apple and witness its fall.


Apparently the possessive apostrophe isn't used with pronouns (like 'it').

English is a silly language.


Mikaze wrote:

Look at the apple, it's falling.

Then let us look upon the apple and witness its fall.

Nice example. I may steal it when teaching this. Hope you don't mind!


Think of the apostrophe as a tiny 'i', and it may help you remember that it's = it is.

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