I agree. It is not difficult at all, unless you’re a greengrocer of course!
I’m no language expert, but I do tend to be a bit picky and I think that if only teachers (mainly at primary school) could teach - or be allowed to teach(!) - the basics of language, we wouldn’t be seeing so many of these mistakes.
Just a hobby horse of mine.
Me too I’m afraid.
Like everything else it’s so easy when you know!
Rule: Never EVER EVER put an apostrophe in it’s (like that) unless you mean IT IS.
In every other instance it is simply its.
Aha! But my pad immediately altered it to it’s…so predictive texting has a lot to answer for!!
Edit edit edit!!
One of the problems as I see it is that only English teachers are allowed to correct text. Teachers of other subjects no longer do that. When I was at school, many decades ago now, any teacher of any subject would mark errors. Most of us could at least read, write and do basic maths on leaving school at the age of 15 and going into the world of work. A while ago I read that is not always the case nowadays.
Yes, now retired it’s no longer a necessity but old habits die hard, very hard.
Ahem, not quite every other instance. It’s can also mean ‘it has’, e.g. “It’s been a pleasure” 
All spell checkers and predictive text should go back to school or be assigned to the dustbin, that is where many errors originate. Due to being in the printing trade and the work I did it was necessary to be able to touch-type. These days though if a spell checker is in operation, the speeds obtained are nothing to what they were as incorrect words are being substituted, perhaps when a key is simply caught incorrectly. That never used to happen but even after 40 years on qwerty keyboards I regularly have to go back and correct errors that I know I have not made.
I can so relate to this! I too have been a touch typist for more years than I care to remember, and I am always aware when I make a mistake, so immediately correct it. These days, the spellcheckers and autocorrect systems think they know better than me, so I now have to carefully read everything I type to ferret out their mistakes!
What I find really annoying is that spell checkers can be turned off but the default is ‘on’ so when a new piece of text is started the spell checker is back on again! I have even had instances where I have amended a spell check error but it still gets changed back to how it was believed to be correct, usually just before I submit the text, be that in a post on here or an e-mail.
Actually, I mentioned teachers at primary school for a specific reason.
In my view, primary school should be the place where the basics of correct English should be taught (rather than all the trendy new subjects we are now expected to cover). That is what used to happen, anyway, when I went to primary school.
The same has been the case for many years, as far as I’m aware. Certainly, my dad learnt how to read, write spell, grammaticise, etc. at that age and, consequently, although he didn’t have much of a secondary level education, he did have those basic skills of English and, incidentally, numeracy.
Certainly, teach a range of other subjects at secondary level and even extend the teaching of English to include literacy in all its forms, but I strongly believe the basics should be taught to everyone at primary school.
As you have mentioned, if children had those basic skills when they leave primary school, then it should be possible for teachers at secondary school to point out such errors with advantage in students’ general written work.
I taught myself to touch-type many years ago, though not because I needed the skill for my work; mainly because I saw it as an interesting challenge. I became quite good at it, although not up to professional typists’ speeds.
Sadly, although I think I can still do it relatively quickly, I regularly make mistakes and have to slow down quite a lot. Even then, mistakes are still made.
I blame my fingers, of course. They’re as old as my brain, of course. Oh, and I blame my aged brain too.
