Wednesday, 19 December 2007
The It Problem
How can one three-letter word cause so much confusion? I'm talking about how many people get "its/it's" wrong.
While enduring the annual Christmas shopping battle, I’ve seen quite a few shop windows and brochures announcing “Its Christmas.” In my writer brain, I wonder who or what "it" is and what "it" has to do with Christmas.
English is a weird and wonderful language with all sorts of strange quirks. Most of us know an apostrophe either shows possession or a contraction. We write “Jim’s shoes” to show ownership or “there’s the cat” when contracting ‘there is’. But "it" is different - we write “its” for the possessive and “it’s” for the contraction.
When you next start to ponder whether you should use "its" or "it’s", try rewriting or saying the sentence aloud without using the contraction or stating who owns what. For example, if you want to say “it is Christmas”, you write “it’s Christmas”. If you want to say “it owns that present,” you write “its Christmas present”.
I still don’t know who it is, but I hope they have a great Christmas and you do too.
While enduring the annual Christmas shopping battle, I’ve seen quite a few shop windows and brochures announcing “Its Christmas.” In my writer brain, I wonder who or what "it" is and what "it" has to do with Christmas.
English is a weird and wonderful language with all sorts of strange quirks. Most of us know an apostrophe either shows possession or a contraction. We write “Jim’s shoes” to show ownership or “there’s the cat” when contracting ‘there is’. But "it" is different - we write “its” for the possessive and “it’s” for the contraction.
When you next start to ponder whether you should use "its" or "it’s", try rewriting or saying the sentence aloud without using the contraction or stating who owns what. For example, if you want to say “it is Christmas”, you write “it’s Christmas”. If you want to say “it owns that present,” you write “its Christmas present”.
I still don’t know who it is, but I hope they have a great Christmas and you do too.
Labels: business writing, grammar, spelling, writing for business
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