It's What It Is

I've mentioned previously how much I truly enjoy the lunchroom conversations from my 11:30 lunchtime gang of coworkers.  The topics vary bigtime - on any given day, you could hear us talking about hunting, Facebook, church, Dancing With the Stars, the Scouts, recipes, old TV shows, music, etc etc.  Toward the end of our lunchtime today, the conversation took a more scholarly theme:  it's vs. its.

My coworker, childhood friend and faithful reader SH was leaving the lunchroom before her lunch time was over, saying she had to go do some research on something for her son's homework.  They were discussing when you use "it's" and when you use "its."  She asked me about it, and with about 99% confidence, I told her that you use "it's" as a contraction for "it is" and you use "its" as a pronoun when you're talking about possession. We discussed it for a few more minutes, and then I said this reminded me of a joke:  How many Master's Degree'd people does it take to figure out it's vs. its?  In this case, it took two.