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ITS/IT'S |
First let's all join in hearty curse of the grammarians who inserted the wretched apostrophe into possessives in the first place. It was all a mistake. Our ancestors used to write "Johns hat" meaning "the hat of John" without the slightest ambiguity. However, some time in the Renaissance certain scholars decided that the simple "s" of possession must have been formed out of a contraction of the more "proper" "John his hat." Since in English we mark contractions with an apostrophe, they did so, and we were stuck with the stupid "John's hat." Their error can be a handy reminder though: if you're not sure whether a noun ending in "s" should be followed by an apostrophe, ask yourself whether you could plausibly substitute "his" or "hers" for the "s." Get this straight once and for all: when the "s" is added to a word simply to make it a plural, no apostrophe is used.
Why can't we all agree to do away with the wretched apostrophe? Because its two uses--contraction and possession--have people so thoroughly confused that they are always putting in apostrophes where they don't belong, in simple plurals ("cucumber's for sale") and family names when they are referred to collectively ("the Smith's"). People often misspell my last name as "Brian's." It is not uncommon to see the S wrongly apostrophized even in verbs, as in the mistaken "He complain's a lot."
The exception to the general rule that one should use an apostrophe to indicate possession is in possessive pronouns. Some of them are not a problem. "Mine" has no misleading "s" at the end to invite an apostrophe. And few people are tempted to write "hi's," though the equally erroneous "her's" is fairly common, as are "our's" and "their's"--all wrong, wrong, wrong. The problem with avoiding "it's" as a possessive is that this spelling is perfectly correct as a contraction meaning "it is." Just remember two points and you'll never make this mistake again. (1) "It's" always means "it is" or "it has" and nothing else. (2) Try changing the "its" in your sentence to "his" and if it doesn't make sense, then go with "it's."