On "it's" vs. "its"

[wst]

Simple one really.

My friend said, about a puppet, "The hand is up it's arse.", and I said that I thought the apostrophe was misplaces, and the phrase should be "The hand is up its arse."

Then my friend said, "So it's up Wills arse, then?" (me being the Will in question), which looks wrong to me...

Anyway, to settle this debate, can someone break it down for me? Because I haven't studied grammar in a long time and I've avoided typing things like "The thing is up James'/James/whatever's arse" for ages just because of that bloody apostrophe. Lynn Truss put the fear of a misplaced ' in me and now I've even forgotten the actual placement of the ' anyway!

[Deva]

It's: Short for "it is". Works like "can't" and "cannot", in terms of apostrophe usage. Example: "It's nice of you to visit." (See also: "It is nice of you to visit.")

Its: Shows possession. Works like "her" or "his". Example: "Grab its collar." (Refers to <animal>'s collar. May use "Grab his/her collar" with a gender.)

Recommends substituting in "it is" for any unclear situation. Using the sentence in question, does "The hand is up it is backside" sound correct? Should not. Use "its". May write the correct sentence as "The hand is up its backside" or "The hand is up the puppet's backside".

Does that help?

[wst]

Good, that means I was right about the it's/its.

What if you had a pronoun there instead of "it"? Like "Will" or "James"? Would "Wills" and "James'" be correct for the (otherwise left intact) sentence?

[Gigano]

In the case of the puppet, "its" can refer to either the puppet or the hand (or the owner of the hand, i.e. you). Logic should tell you that a hand doesn't haven an arse (the owner does, but he's irrelevant), so "its" should refer to the puppet.

Using it's rather than its doesn't take away the confusion your friend brings up. But present the following sentence to him and it's obvious that using a different way to (by the way, as said by Deva, incorrectly) spell "its" does not resolve the confusion:

"He greeted his father."

Whose father? The father of the "he" in the sentence, or someone else's father? Both are acceptable, and there is no real way in English to distinguish between the two objectively. In Latin for instance, it's different because nouns have different declensions depending on their subject:

"Suum patrem interrogavit." - He asked his (own) father.

"Eius patrem interrogavit." - He asked his (someone else's) father

As for the possessive forms of Will and James, they would respectively be Will's and James'. In the later case, adding an extra s isn't deemed necessary.

[eSOANEM]

What if you had a pronoun there instead of "it"? Like "Will" or "James"? Would "Wills" and "James'" be correct for the (otherwise left intact) sentence?

Got the use of pronoun the wrong way round there (i.e. I, you, it, he, that etc. are all pronouns; Will, James, America, Thames etc. are proper nouns or names). Pronouns are the only ones where the possessive takes irregular forms.

So for everything else, the possessive take the regular 's (or ' if it ends in s or z).

Pronouns do irregular things and exactly what depends on the pronoun e.g.

I -> my
you -> your
he -> his
she -> her
it -> its
we -> our
they -> their
those -> their

Almost all pronouns do not have an apostrophe in their possessive (the only exception I can think of off the top of my head being "one" -> "one's" and other pronouns which gain a "one's").

[Pez Dispens3r]

Pronouns are the only ones where the possessive takes irregular forms.

This is probably the most meaningful answer you'll find for your question. You wouldn't notice if I edit my work, but I regularly give 'its' the possessive apostrophe. The possessive apostrophe is just some weird convention which doesn't apply to pronouns for valid but ignoble reasons (like, we use the same apostrophe mark to shorten words so there's that confusion, and we don't tend to say his's even though a possessive apostrophe would require you say it with two 'esses').

It might be useful to consider that the English language was well-established before modern punctuation existed, so you get these weird things when you try to integrate a formal system into a dynamic one.

[eSOANEM]

Pronouns are the only ones where the possessive takes irregular forms.

This is probably the most meaningful answer you'll find for your question. You wouldn't notice if I edit my work, but I regularly give 'its' the possessive apostrophe. The possessive apostrophe is just some weird convention which doesn't apply to pronouns for valid but ignoble reasons (like, we use the same apostrophe mark to shorten words so there's that confusion, and we don't tend to say his's even though a possessive apostrophe would require you say it with two 'esses').

No, no. If his used the regular form it would be he's not his. It's nothing special about the possessive either. Pronouns are generally weird (in lots of languages) because the commonly used words (such as pronouns and the verbs to be, to go and to have) are more likely to be irregular.

Nouns don't decline for case in English. Except pronouns do. 1[NOM]=I, 1[OBL]=me and 1[POS]=my.

So, whilst most nouns in English exist in a caseless system dependent on word order, prepositions and the clitic 's, pronouns exit in a 3-case system with a nominative, oblique and possessive case. IIRC this is a hang-over from when all nouns declined and not related to punctuation or our writing system at all really.

The regular possessive 's is also called the Saxon genitive because of its origin in the old English -es and so, the apostrophe does represent a contraction due to the drop of the "e" however the pronouns were still weird in old English.

some examples of how pronouns were weird before there was an apostrophe in the 's clitic:

ic (I) -> min
wit (we two) -> uncer
we (we) -> usic/us
þu (you) -> þec/þe
ge (you plural) -> eowic/eo

none of which use the regular -es, -a, -e, -an or -ena so clearly the possessive would have been just as weird, albeit perhaps less confusingly written to our Old English speaking ancestors.

[Pez Dispens3r]

Right, I'm with you. Thanks for the explanation.

[XopherHalftongue]

Almost all pronouns do not have an apostrophe in their possessive (the only exception I can think of off the top of my head being "one" -> "one's" and other pronouns which gain a "one's").

No personal pronoun in English has an apostrophe in the possessive. Indefinite pronouns do, because they behave like nouns. The case of 'one' will seem less anomalous if you note its relationship to 'someone', 'anyone', and 'everyone'. Also 'everybody' etc. but those are less directly relevant. I was confused about this (chiefly about the fact that 'someone' and the rest are indefinite pronouns) until my recent reread of Karen Elizabeth Gordon's wonderful The Well-Tempered Sentence.

I personally have an aversion to 'one'. It's rarely used correctly ('One must keep his clothes clean' is jsut worng, for example), and even when one uses it correctly, it makes one's writing sound as if one is a pretentious git. IMNSHO. But that's aesthetics, not grammar.