it's vs its | Common English Grammar Mistake

87,634 views ・ 2019-05-16

Shaw English Online


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Hey guys.
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Look at this sentence.
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And now look at that sentence.
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One of them is wrong.
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If you don't know which one is wrong, I suggest you keep watching.
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Hello guys my name is Fanny and in this video I'm gonna talk to you about a major
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spelling mistake in English.
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Among students, but also, among native speakers.
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It's a difference between 'it's' meaning 'it is'.
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And 'its' being the possessive adjective.
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Okay let's and take a few sentences and I'm sure you'll get it.
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So we have 'It's a sunny day'.
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In this case 'it's' is the verb 'to be'.
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So it means 'It is a sunny day'.
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If we take the second sentence:
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'The dog ate its food'.
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This is not the verb 'to be'.
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It's the possessive adjectives for an object or an animal.
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So the food belongs to the dog. It is its food.
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Okay so these are two different cases
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but sometimes when we write, we confuse the two,
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and we will write the dog ate it's food with apostrophe s.
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you know getting confused between its possessive adjectives
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and it's being the contraction of the verb 'to be'.
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This is a very common mistake.
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if we take for example the sentence:
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'Its my pen'.
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Now look at the sentence.
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What do you think?
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Is this right? Or is this the wrong spelling?
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Well it's wrong.
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'It's my pen' is the verb 'to be'.
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Now the best tip that I can give you
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if you get confused, try and say it with the full form.
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Try and say 'It is'.
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If it makes sense, then it's the contraction of the verb 'to be'
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and it should be apostrophe 's'.
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If it doesn't make sense, then it's probably the possessive adjective.
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So for example, I can say, 'It is a sunny day'.
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That makes sense.
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Can I say the dog ate it is food?
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No, I can't. that doesn't make any sense.
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Okay if I say, 'It's my pen',
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What do you think? Can I say 'It is my pen'?
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I can.
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So it's actually the contraction of the verb 'to be'.
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So it should be 'it' + apostrophe 's' + my pen.
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And just so you know one last thing.
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Be careful because sometimes in some cases
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'it's' can also be the contraction of the verb 'to have' and not 'to be'.
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If we take those two sentences:
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It's been great to meet you.
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It means - It has been great to meet you.
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'It's got four legs' means it has got four legs.
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Okay so the verb in those cases is 'to have' so be careful.
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Okay guys I hope you now understand the difference
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between the contraction of the verb 'to be' and the possessive adjective 'its'.
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Thank you for watching the video.
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Make sure you watch the other videos as well.
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Thank you guys for watching my video I hope it has helped and if you've liked
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it please show us your support.
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Click like, subscribe to the channel, put your comments below,
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and share the video with your friends.
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See you.
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