🏁 It’s is short for it is, but its means something belongs to the ‘it’:
It’s cute when the cat licks its paws.
When the elephant lifts up a log with its trunk, it’s impressive!
It’s a fact that a camel can carry water in its hump (or humps).
📲 💻You can use this link to a Google Form to check you can use these words in the right way.
🎯 💻 Want to try a test or two?
https://www.grammarbook.com/grammar_quiz/its_1.asp
http://www.softschools.com/quizzes/grammar/words_its_its/quiz2490.html
https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/cw-its-its-quiz.htm
🎯 📝 If you need a bit of practise to make sure you’ve understood it, write this passage out putting in the possessive word ‘its,’ and you’ll soon get the idea.
The cat sat on … mat and licked … paws. Then it shook … legs and lay down. Soon it was asleep and dreaming, and … tail twitched and … paws moved. Then it was still, and all … legs stopped moving, and only the slight rise and fall of … chest showed you it was still breathing.
✅ This is what your version should have looked like:
The cat sat on its mat and licked its paws. Then it shook its legs and lay down. Soon it was asleep and dreaming, and its tail twitched and its paws moved. Then it was still, and all its legs stopped moving, and only the slight rise and fall of its chest showed you it was still breathing.
🚦It’s is the short form of saying it is, using an apostrophe. Its means something belongs to something or someone, and to avoid confusing it with ‘it is’ is written without the apostrophe. This can look odd at first!
🎓 Other possessive words like ours and theirs do the same job and are also written without an apostrophe.