' + i + t + s

I hesitate to write this post.

See, I hate Grammar Police. One time when Josh and I were dating, we were eating dinner at the house of a family friend who also happened to be an English professor. Josh was in the middle of a story and this friend interrupted him mid-sentence to correct (or rather complain) about some ridiculous "grammatical error" Josh had committed. I was so mad, I spent a good 20 minutes that night making up conversations between me and said professor. Some of my points in this imaginary conversation were thus:

1) Usage trumps prescriptive rules--especially in speech (yes, I'm the daughter of a linguist, who, nevertheless can be surprisingly prescriptive when it comes to the "correct" way to say that a movie is rated R. Should it be R-rated or rated-R?).

2) Stories and, to a much greater extent, relationships are worth more than any grammar "rule."

3) Can you use the word "pretentious" as a subjective complement with your name as the subject?

But the truth is, I love grammar. I love diagramming sentences, debating the rhetorical merits of equally correct punctuation marks, and solving tricky punctuation problems with grace. And it's a good thing since I'm an editor. As such, I often have friends mention that they're afraid of writing things I'll read for fear that I'm silently editing their work and thinking less of them as a result of it not being punctuated perfectly.

Do I silently edit things? Usually. It's a force of habit. Do I think any less of the person committing grammatical mistakes? No! Unless they're my students on a principle we've gone over. A lot. And they weren't paying attention.

Also, here's a secret: on the scale of spelling ability, I'm about a 6. In my line of work, I should probably be a 9.5 at least. Thank goodness for online dictionaries.

Anyway, all of this is to say that I value and understand grammar, I notice mistakes, but I usually hesitate to ever tell anyone about them. And mostly that's just fine because who cares about punctuation/usage in a blog or on a card or in any number of other informal contexts. But then I see something like "your" engraved on a permanent sign that is screwed to the wall of at least one (but probably many) IHOP lobbies when it should be "you're" and I think to myself that if I have a good way to explain some usage or punctuation principle to the world, I should, just in case it helps someone who is in charge of writing a sentence on something really permanent in the future.

So, if you made it this far, stick around for the world's most simple explanation of how to combine the following four elements (if you don't already know):

'

i

t

s

If it sounds right to say "it is" in your sentence, put an apostrophe between the T and the S. (it's)

Anytime "it is" sounds funny in a sentence, don't use any apostrophe at all. (its)

That's it. There are no other correct combinations of those elements out there. Easy, right?

Is this helpful?

More disclaimers:

1. I know that Grammar Girl already gives lessons like the above but with more humor and pop culture references. Yes, I wish I were Grammar Girl.

2. If you're about to comment to tell me that "grammar" is not synoymous with punctuation and usage, you're missing the spirit of this post.

3. I'm sure you will find an incorrect usage of "it's" on my very next post now that I've written this one. And that's okay.