Its and it's

That was quite a tricky sentence.
I wasn't sure where to put 'em, but the message was understood.

as to the specific it's/its question, i think the majority of adults whom ! i know , would not be sure about that.
the few who would are probably older people, over 75 and went to grammar school.
and maybe not all of them, if they were on the science side.
so by definition that is a minority of the populus.
someone above said it was basic. don't think i can agree with that.
when i was at school we did comprehension, and correcting passage of text that had these sort of errors. which made it more interesting. hunt the aberrant apostrophe.
nowadays children seem to have to learn reams of strange linguistic terms, which to me is pointless and off-putting.

Apostrophes in general - what about sentences like "I went to the doctor's? " Is that right?
Or a shop sign saying " Sally's fruit and veg".
It doesn't bother me much either to be honest. Written messages are intended to communicate between people.
ps Welbeck - I used to try to teach children with reading and writing problems and came up with that idea of giving them passages of script with deliberate errors to correct. The children loved doing it. But our poor secretary who typed them out found it very difficult.

Fennel

Apostrophes in general - what about sentences like "I went to the doctor's? " Is that right?
Or a shop sign saying " Sally's fruit and veg".
It doesn't bother me much either to be honest. Written messages are intended to communicate between people.
ps Welbeck - I used to try to teach children with reading and writing problems and came up with that idea of giving them passages of script with deliberate errors to correct. The children loved doing it. But our poor secretary who typed them out found it very difficult.

Surely both are fine?
Doctor’s being short for Doctor’s surgery and until you hand over the money, the fruit and veg do indeed belong to Sally.

Anybody like to add to the list?
Recently I have seen too many of the following

Loose for lose
Hoard (with or without an e) for horde
Allot for a lot
Que for queue
Bare (with me) for bear with me

No doubt there are others

While we are talking about use of English, could I draw attention to my pet hate: It is "would of" instead of "would have". I am a former English teacher.

Loose for lose is very common, and they don't even sound the same! When I worked with medical records it was by no means unusual to see references to people who needed to 'loose weight' and that conjures up masses of fat flolloping around, not under control!

Probably true !

PIN number

This morning in The Times I read ‘who’s ‘ instead of ‘whose’. I shuddered!

Loose for lose is very common, and they don't even sound the same!

But choose is pronounced similarly to lose.
Must be confusing to some.

I hate the use of the word "everyone" in sentences such as "everyone is waiting for sport to return ". Please don't include me ! We were also told that everyone"is desperate to get out of lockdown". Again, please don't speak for me.

Epicentre is another one which has me shouting at the TV. The epicentre of an earthquake is the spot on the surface over where the focus is, not the very centre, which is how it has been used (over and over and over...) in relation to coronavirus. Somebody probably thought that it sounded more scientific than just saying the 'centre' or the 'focus' of outbreaks, and then others followed.

Think I'm on a loser there though - the fate of pedants through the ages.