It's a Peeve

It is = it's [a peeve]

Professional journalists, editors, writers -- they all use "it's" incorrectly more and more often. Not only that, they swap "it's" and "its" around as though they're synonymous. It's (see?) become an epidemic, a plague, a tsumani.

Well, they're not.

Do you mean "it is"? Or possibly, "it has," depending on tense.

Then you can use "it's" (with the apostrophe indicating something left out)

and that's the ONLY time you get to use it.

"Its" is a pronoun, a neutral term (not masc. not fem.). Use it when you want to talk about an entity of some kind

The horse uses its teeth to eat apples.
Its facade makes the building ugly.
The car meets the pavement on its tires.

Why is this so hard to understand????

it's = it is

otherwise, use its

And let's not get me started on "him and I" or "me and her"!

Simple.