Commonly Confused:  his and he's

Which word - "he's" or "his" fits into the blank below?

 __________ doctor would come to his home to treat him.

Here we continue with our unit on possessives. Possessive adjectives are commonly confused with other words and word forms.  In this lesson, we will help you to distinguish between a possessive adjective and these other forms.

This will help you with your reading comprehension and with your writing.

Let's first answer the question to define our terms: What is a contraction?

A contraction is a word that is formed when two words combine by eliminating a letter and using an apostrophe in place of the dropped letter.   One common contraction is "he's". In writing, the contraction he's is often confused with the possessive adjective his .

  • he's (he is) is a contraction formed by combining the subject pronoun he and the 2nd person form of the "be" verb is, and replacing the "i" of "is" with an apostrophe ' :  he + is --› he's

  • his is a possessive adjective.

Exercise 9

 

Exercise 9: His or He's - Possessive Adjective or Noun + Verb Contraction?

1)  If the bolded word is a possessive adjective, circle it.
2)) If the bolded word is a noun + verb contraction, rewrite the sentence in the space provided with the noun and the verb as separate words.

1.   He's an engineer.

2.  His wife is also an engineer.

3.  He's a nice person and he's very funny.

4.  He and his wife have something going on at their home on Friday nights.

5.  He's explaining to my mother what's going on in the movie.

6.  His doctor would come to his home to treat him.

Click here for the answers to this exercise.

Next...

In our next lesson, we discuss: Commonly Confused:  its and it's

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