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It's is the short form of 'it is' or 'it has', e.g. 'It's cold today', or 'It's got colder'. Note that the apostrophe replaces one or more letters that have been removed. If we bracket the removed letters(s) it becomes clear: In the first example the letter 'i' from 'is' has been removed to give it(i)s, and in the second example the letters 'h' and 'a' have been removed to give it(ha)s. Confusingly, it's looks like the 3rd person neuter possessive adjective, but it's not. Nouns have an apostrophe to signal possession, 'David's book', but pronouns do not, so just remember that when you see it's it means it is, or it has. You may be interested to learn about The Possessives in English which are: Possessive Adjectives * Possessive Pronouns 1st person singular my mine 2nd person singular your (this is your book) yours 3rd person singular his/her/its his/hers/** 1st person plural our ours 2nd person plural your yours 3rd person plural their theirs * Linguists nowadays call these possessive adjectives Determiners. ** 'its' cannot be used as possessive pronoun, e.g. You can't say 'this is its.

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16y ago

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