Descending into the bowels* of the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture this afternoon, I happened to notice, hanging on the wall, an old sign for what was once a stationery company. I can’t remember the name of the business, but the tagline on the sign read something like, “If its made of paper, we sell it.”
Did you catch the error? No? I’m not surprised. The question of whether to use “its” or “it’s” manages to confound even the most diligent of writers. Good thing I’m here to set things straight:
- “its” is a possessive pronoun, like “his,” “hers,” or “theirs”
- “it’s” is a contraction that always means either “it is” or “it has”
See? That’s not so hard, is it? The tagline should therefore read, “If it’s made of paper, we sell it.”
*It was pretty disappointing, actually. Seems to me that a museum basement ought to be musty, dirty, dark, cobwebbed, and, well…spooky. The MAC’s? More like an operating room.
