Difference Its and It's

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What is the difference between Its and It's? It's is always the abbreviation of "it is" as in "It's (= it is) a nice day, isn't it?" Its is the possessive of "it" as in, "That is Morton's puppy but I don't know its name." In the second sentence, its means "belonging to it".



http://www.grammar-monster.com/easily_confused/its_its.htm

Quit and Quiet and Quite

Coming to you live from Bravo pizza restaurant and micro brewery.

 Quit means to stop something .

For the sake of your children, quit smoking.


Quiet- not make any noise

Filipinos do not believe in peace and quiet even after midnight.


 Quite- to a certain or fairly significant extent or degree.

Street vendors are quite noisy even after midnight.

They gave us quite the choice between Donald and Hillary. 

Never Say I Played Good

This is wrong:

 I played good

  Good is an adjective but in the bad example  it is modifying a verb.


An adverb has to modify a verb. And an adjective modifies  a noun.

Let me give you a funky example. The Queen song Another One Bites The Dust. The first line goes like this:

Steve walks warily down the street

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE


 Queen


Walks is a verb. How does Steve walk?? You need an adverb to modify the verb which in this case is warily.

Rules To Live By

In 1988 my mom was giving a post dinner lecture. Telling us not to leave the dinner table to watch TV. Stay and talk to the family. Just as she said this, she was dialing the wireless phone. If you understand that story you will understand the following list. 

Ed

Confusing Words Live and Lives

Homographs

Live as in we are dealing with a  live  wire. Meaning the wire has electricity. Live can also mean  something is not dead.

I want to live in Antarctica. Meaning you will stay somewhere permanently or for the foreseeable future. 

References: 

http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/words/live_life.htm

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/live

Two Uses For The Word Minute

The word minute can have two entirely different meanings and pronunciations and yet the same spelling.

Minute the noun is the most commonly used one.

definition: 60 seconds.

It takes two hours to clean my apartment and only a minute to mess it up.

Minute the adjective.

definition : small

I have a minute chance of getting into Harvard.



Newt. Bonus word.

definition: any of various small salamanders (family Salamandridae) that are usually semiaquatic as adults.

I surprised my sister by putting a newt in her cabinet.

Welcome To My English Teaching Blog

I was talking to one of my favorite students (not pictured)  and realized that the two words minute and minute had the same spelling but different pronunciations and different meanings. What could be more confusing than that?? So I figured I would start a blog with the most confusing English concepts I run across for easy reference of my students as well as other people trying to make sense of this insane language. 



 Ed