>>>>>Hi everybody,
>>>>>
>>>>>Just curious how many of you know when to use its and when it's? I see a wrong usage in native speakers' texts quite often...
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>I do, but until I started writing and editing regularly, I had to stop and think about it every time. I finally figured out that the possessive "its" matches up with "his" and "hers" and thus doesn't need an apostrophe.
>>>>
>>>>Tamar
>>>
>>>My former manager once told me, that two most common mistakes native speakers do are "it's/its" wrong usage and using word "irregardless" <g>
>>>
>>>I noiticed recently that my son's teacher spelled "yogurt" wrongly in the paper distributed to homes...
>>
>>I noticed you spelt "noiticed" :-)
>>
>>I was at a pub quiz last year where the MC said "Which verb can mean a strong whirlpool sea current or a devastating sequence of events?"
>>
>>Of course, I thought "Maelstrom" but that's a noun. The whole pub was flummoxed by this and protested to him later that it's a noun. He declared indignantly "Don't tell me my job - I'm an English teacher". He later relented and said "OK, it CAN be a noun too".
>>
>>I was nearly apoplectic by now and the whole pub jumped down his throat. I forgot to ask him which school he taught at, to ensure I don't send my kids there.
>
>There is a story by A. Poe, which describes maelstrom. I can not quote the exact title of it, but if you read it you may find some new words for this phenomenon.

That's not the point. The point is he was passing it off as a verb. One can't maelstrom something. It's only a noun. IOW you can't trust teachers nowadays.