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The distinction between “its” and “it's” can be quite confusing for non-native English speakers. Basically, "its" refers to possession whereas "it's" is a contraction of 'it is'.
decision
court
More information on the words discussed in the video, including sound files, examples of usage, common mistakes and encyclopaedic information, can be found in TransLegal's Legal English Dictionary.
Hi, my name is Mandesa and welcome to TransLegal's lesson of the week.
This week I'm going to be talking about the distinction or difference between “its” and “it's”. My colleagues and I at TransLegal have realised that for non-native English speakers this can be quite a confusing distinction.
In a nutshell, “its” refers to possession whereas “it's” refers to or is a shortened form of 'it is'. To illustrate this difference we can talk about a court decision.
For example, we can talk about:
“the court's decision" or "its decision" – its, which means the decision of the court.
However, when we then speak about what this decision was we can say, "it's the decision of the court" or "it is the decision of the court" – it's.
Thank you very much. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them in the box below and either myself or one of my colleagues will be more than happy to respond.
This may be helpful:
his, her, their, its — no pronoun possessive takes an apostrophe
he’s, she’s, they’re, it’s — all pronoun contractions (“is, are”) take an apostrophe
And by the way, using the wrong form is a *very* common error by people whose native language is English. Usually people substitute “it’s” for “its” but not the other way around.