IT'S vs. ITS - What's the Difference? - When to Use It's and Its, with Example Sentences

In this lesson, you will learn the difference between IT'S and ITS. Also see - MOST COMMON MISTAKES IN ENGLISH & HOW TO AVOID THEM:    • 50 MOST COMMON MISTAKES in English Gr...  

Transcript:

Hi and welcome back. My name is Ganesh, I'm from LearnEnglishLab.com
And in this lesson we're going to discuss the difference between its and it's.
Of course I know it sounds like I'm saying the same word and that's because
the pronunciation is the same for both of these but their meanings are very different.

And this is actually an area where a lot of native speakers make mistakes because these
can be really confusing. But today, I'm going to teach you the difference between these
two forms and how to use them correctly.

So let's start with it's with an apostrophe. This mark is called an apostrophe.
So when you have it's with an apostrophe, what you have is a short form.
And these are all some examples of short forms in English
You're is you are. She'll is she will. He'd can be he would or "he had"
depending on the sentence. They've is "they have," and didn't and couldn't are
"did not" and "could not." The apostrophe in these words shows that some other
word has been shortened.

So when you have it's with the apostrophe, the shortened word can be "is" or "has"
So this it's can be "it is" or "it has" depending on the meaning in the sentence.

Here I have some examples, and in the first two examples we have "it is"
Number one is "It's time to start the meeting."What we're saying here is
"It is time to start the meeting." In fact, if you want you can put "It is" here
and the meaning would be the same. In number two, we have a question-and-answer
How's your new job? - The answer is "It's great. I love it!"
What I'm trying to say is "My new job is great," so I'm saying "It is great."
In speech we just say "It's great. I love it."

In the next two examples we have "it has"
Number three - "It's been raining for two hours" Here, the meaning is that the
rain started two hours ago and the rain is still continuing. So we're using the
present perfect continuous tense - that is "has been" and -ing. So what we're saying
is It has been raining. In the shortened form, it's just
"It's been raining for two hours" - it's easier to say it that way

In our final example once again we have a question-and-answer
The question is - "Have you seen Ellie lately?" And the answer is
"No, it's been a year since I last saw her." So I saw Ellie a year ago, and after
that time I have not seen Ellie. So, I'm saying
"It has been a year" or It's been a year since I last saw her.

So when you have it's with the apostrophe, it can be "it is" or "it has" depending
on the meaning in the sentence.

Let's now talk about its without the apostrophe. When you have this word - that is
its with no apostrophe, you have a possessive pronoun. I know that sounds like a
difficult couple of words to say but all that is, is this family of words -
my, your, his, her, our, their etc.

Possess means to have something. So these words just show that something belongs to
something or someone else. For example, when I say "This is my pen" I mean that this
pen belongs to me. If we talk about your car, we're talking about a car that you own.

We use these kinds of words so that we don't have to repeat ourselves when we speak
or write. For example, "If I said Tom loves Tom's wife" - sounds a little strange,
doesn't it? Tom loves Tom's wife - are we talking about the same Tom or different Toms?
Well, in order to avoid this kind of confusion, and to make our speech less repetitive,
we can say "Tom loves his wife." You probably guessed that. His wife just refers to
Tom's wife And in the same way, we can say "her sister" or "our home," "their school" etc.

But what about when we want to talk about an animal, place or thing and we want to
use a possessive pronoun with an animal, place or thing? Well, that's why we have its,
and it comes from it which is also a pronoun. Its is just the possessive form of it.
For example, the dog wagged its tail. Here, it refers to the dog and its means
the dog's tail.

Now one very very important thing to notice here, and this is key to understanding the
difference between the two forms - When there's no apostrophe, there's no short form.
That means, remember we said if you have it's, you can put "it is" or "it has" in its
place and the meaning would be the same. Notice here, you cannot say
"The dog wagged it is tail" or "it has tail" - that makes no sense. That's because there
is no short form. This word is just a possessive pronoun of some other noun and
in this case, it's dog.

Liechtenstein does not have its own army. It's here talks about Lichtenstein's army.
There's no army in Liechtenstein. So "Liechtenstein does not have its own army."

And in the last example, "The company is planning to expand its operations in Asia."