Help me jazz up my English paper with science vocab

[zoobyshoe]

i just wanted to thank you guys for those first few posts about its vs it's... really made me laugh... "it's its... no its it's... no its its... nuh it's it's!" hehe... wow I'm amused...

I enjoyed this attempt to settle the matter:

"Its" is the possessive. Stop this debate.

 

[honestrosewater]

This is such a complex way to do it, though. It's easier just to ask if what you're expressing is a possessive, or a contraction of "it is".

Yeah, the contraction is probably easiest. But I thought the problem was that the possessive case is usually formed by adding 's, making the contraction idea confusing. So I was suggesting basically the same thing; Instead of focusing on what the word looks like, look at how the word behaves in the sentence. Meh, I thought another option might be helpful.

So Strunk & White group its with theirs, yours, and ours. I think it makes more sense to group its with their, your, and our. Look how they behave:

That food is theirs.
?That food is its.
Their food is yummy.
Its food is yummy.
The food it yummy.

Maybe you can use its as a pronoun? The example they give is:

It's a wise dog that scratches its own fleas.

It's a wise dog that scratches our own fleas.
*It's a wise dog that scratches ours own fleas.

Ugh.