people drive me crazy

I hate the days when I'm the only one in the office. The phone never stops ringing, and I have to deal, unbuffered, with idiots and crazy people all day.

And, just because it's the mood I'm in, I'm going to elaborate on my pet grammatical peeve:

it's v. its

I see it everywhere, constantly, usually done wrong, and it makes me want to pull out my hair.

ITS: A possessive. Always and only a possessive. It refers back to an antecedent. Its antecedent needn't be in the same sentence. "The cat licked its tail." "I hated that review. Its poor treatment of the subject matter lacked any clarity whatsoever." "The flan collapsed when I pulled it out of the oven. Apparently, its internal temperature wasn't high enough."

IT'S: A contraction. Always and only signifies a shortening of "it is." "It's cold out today." "That ice cream is horrible. It's a shame they tried copying Ben and Jerry's." "It's a done deal."

Most people get the contraction. People don't usually screw up "it's." But "its" seems to be problematic, and gets mutated into "it's," with horrible grammatical results. I usually see things go like this:

"The cat licked it's tail." What? The cat licked it is tail? That makes no sense.

"I hated that review. It's poor treatment of the subject matter lacked any clarity whatsoever." This is one of the most common errors, and potentially confusing because "it is poor treatment" does make sense, but only if you take the phrase that far. "It is poor treatment of the subject matter lacked..." DOESN'T WORK because there are TWO VERBS (is, lacked) and only ONE of them has a subject. In English, you can't have that. What the sentence is trying to say is, "The review's poor treatment of the subject matter lacked..." "Review's" is possessive. Therefore "its." If you really, really wanted to use "it's," you'd have to say something like, "It's [it is] poor treatment of the subject matter, and it lacks any clarity whatsoever." Looky there. Two independent clauses, and each verb has a subject. Nifty. Acceptable.

"The flan collapsed when I pulled it out of the oven. Apparently, it's internal temperature wasn't high enough." Subtly different, because in this case, "it is internal temperature" doesn't make any sense at all. WHAT is internal temperature? Oh wait, you weren't meaning to say that. You were meaning to say that the FLAN'S internal temperature wasn't high enough. Notice the possessive. Therefore "its."

We get ourselves confused, I think, because when you attach a possessive to a noun, you do use an apostrophe. "My dad's tie is black." "My sister's dog ran away." "My parents' minivan died." "The house's sewer lines broke." Yes, there are apostrophes. But when you make them into PRONOUNS, the apostrophes go away. Possessive pronouns don't have apostrophes. "His tie is black." "Her dog ran away." "Their minivan died." See? No apostrophes. Same with the pronoun "it" made possessive: "Its sewer lines broke." No apostrophe.

Whenever you see "it's," with an apostrophe, it means "it is." There is no possessive. It's (look! look here! It is!) just our lazy way of eradicating any syllable we possibly can. It's a contraction.

"Its," on the other hand, always signals a possessive. Its (this "its" refers back to the "its" in the previous sentence, where "its" functions as the subject because it's in quotation marks) flagrant misuse by native English speakers is distressing.

If all of this sounded too confusing, forgive me; I've been too long out of tutoring. If, however, you're still confused about the issue itself (not it'self), just remember: if you use "it's," and it doesn't make sense when you break it down into "it is," use the other "its."

And if you noticed that all of my examples except the cat licking its tail sounded morbid, just remember that it's the kind of mood I'm in.

Here endeth the lesson.

*Oh, and a little aside, because there are times when I love being a bitch, but those times are followed immediately thereafter by remorse and the fear that I've offended my friends: If you couldn't care less about grammar, then discard whatever I have to say in its regard. If, on the other hand, you find yourself using writing as a frequent tool in your professional life, or if you are any kind of perfectionist, or if you want your writing to be as polished as possible, even if it's just a hobby, then please, please heed my words. It's important. People might think, Who cares about grammar? I have more important things like paying my bills to worry about, but the little rules of life are what what keep us striving to be and do more than we did and were when we started out this whole life thing. And I come from a family (read: clan, in the good Scots sense of the word) which views proper education as of penultimate importance.