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You know those little things that separate a novice from a professional? Now that I've been writing professionally for over a decade, I am (in theory) not supposed to be doing that novice stuff anymore. But I've got one serious area of weakness. It's its. Yup. I wrote that right. It's "its."
Since first grade I've thought it somewhat silly that we have to explain to native English speakers the difference between it's with an apostrophe and its without. To me, it's pretty obvious. The apostrophe is there to make up for the second letter "i" in "it is." Unfortunately, I also know the rule of possession. If something belongs to the word before it, you add an apostrophe to show possession (ex: the boy's book).
This is where my bad habits come in. Even while my brain knows that you don't add the apostrophe to the word "its" unless you are trying to shorten "it is," my fingers don't seem to get the message. I invariably, instinctively type the apostrophe to show possession (ex: They grabbed it's leg - WRONG!). To the average reader, it looks like I don't know the difference between possession and contractions.
Soooo, here is another thing to work on in my writing. If you are reading something I wrote on the Internet on Suite 101 or some other site, you are very likely to spot this error. Big sigh. At least you will know it was legitimately written by me.
Do you have any writing quirks you would like to share?
