GetUnderlined: Your Grammar Guide!

'It's' Versus 'Its' and 'You're' Versus 'Your'

This is probably the most common mistake I see every day. What people tend to write is this:

‘The dog wagged it’s tail.’

This is incorrect!

Here’s the problem. The word ‘it’s’ is a contraction, which means that it’s a combination of two words. What you’re actually saying is this:

‘The dog wagged it is tail.’

This sounds really weird, right? So what’s the proper way to write this sentence?

Correct Way: ‘The dog wagged its tail.’

This shows that the tail belongs to the dog, and he is wagging it.

Another similar mistake that people make is with the words ‘you’re’ and ‘your’. The same rule applies to this problem. If you’re are trying to say, ‘You are really cool!’, then you would say, ‘You’re really cool.’ This is the mistake I see: People write, ‘Your really cool.’

Please don’t do this!

‘Your’ is possessive, and you use it to talk about something that someone owns. You wouldn’t say, ‘Your awesome,’ because this means that the person is owning awesome.

Make sense?

If you’re still confused, just remember this:

You’re: You are

Your: You own something

It’s: It is

Its: It owns something