Apostrophes give many writers a lot of trouble. Sometimes, you might be tempted to put an apostrophe where it does not belong, such as when you are simply making a word plural. Other times, you need to make a word possessive, but you might forget to use the apostrophe.
Then, of course, there is that whole its / it’s thing that confuses most everyone. We covered that in our section on Wrong Words. Remember, the rule is to use an apostrophe when you need to show possession or ownership. The exception is with possessive pronouns such as my, your, his, hers, ours, their, and its.
Its shows ownership while it’s means it is. So, just like hers and his are possessive pronouns that don’t use an apostrophe to show possession, its follows the same format.
For more information on the apostrophe, be sure to check out the Apostrophe section in the Punctuation area of Grammar Essentials (or if you just need to brush up your skills, visit the Apostrophe Refresher). Otherwise, you might end up with a sentence like this:
And, you would want a sentence like this: