The dreaded ITS

A knowledge of grammar is important in writing, but once you know the rules it's okay to break them, as long as you have a good reason for doing so. Incorrect use of language should add meaning to the story you are telling. Of course, only use 'correct' grammar in dialogue if your character would speak that way. It's rare to find someone who speaks correctly and grammatically all the time, even university professors!

Usually, the apostrophe is used to indicate either the possessive, or to stand in for a missing letter. The former is a lengthy discussion in itself, so let's just look here at its use in the latter. The word its for instance; increasingly of late I've noticed that people are becoming more and more confused about when to use the apostrophe with this word.

The word it NEVER takes the possessive, so when you see it's, you know that it's a contraction of it is.

When you read through your work, stop and take note of every instance where you have written it's. Read the sentence again but this time, instead of saying, it's, say it is. Does it fit? If so, then using the apostrophe there is correct. If not, delete the apostrophe. If there is an its in the sentence, perhaps you mean it is, and so should add an apostrophe.

Here are a couple of examples:

Wrong: The dog was guarding it's [it is] ball.

Correct: The dog was guarding its ball. (Remember, its does not take the possessive.)

Wrong: Its a long way to the beach.

Correct: It's [it is] a long way to the beach.

This same exercise works well for any contracted words but be careful, for example, using there's [there is, singular] when you really mean there are [plural].