Punctuation probs...

When I was a little girl, my dad always edited my stories for me. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with him and going over my writing together. He'd correct my spelling, encourage me to eliminate needless words, and broaden my mind to more succinct phrases. He was always quite critical, but the way in which he delivered his criticism never made me feel attacked or inferior. The tips and corrections that he gave me at those late-night editing sessions have stuck with me throughout my life, and I'd like to bring a very simple one up here.

It's vs its, my friends. It's a tricky one...

I still remember the time my dad first taught me about the pesky little exception to the possessive rule. A phrase in my writing personified the wind and mentioned something about "its calm, misty breath" or something along those lines. Except, in my writing, I incorrectly used "it's" with the apostrophe. My dad pointed it out and my first thought was, "wait, how can that be incorrect? The wind possesses the breath. Why wouldn't there be an apostrophe?" But after my dad's careful explanation about the exception made me understand immediately. Because we use "it's" to mean "it is," it would grow very confusing indeed if we also used that apostrophe when making "its" possessive.

However, it's (it is) still sometimes my nature to fall into the sneaky trap of wanting to apostrophize the little word when it's (it is) possessive... its short three letters sometimes look incomplete without the little mark between the s and the t!

I'm sure that most of you already knew this rule by heart, but I thought a good refresher couldn't hurt!