>>>>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.

It should have twigged right at the beginning since a verb can be neither "a current", nor "a sequence".