What is the difference between “thats” and “that’s”?
The difference between thats and that’s is simply that thats is a wrong spelling of that’s, which is the contracted form of that is. In the English language, there is no word thats. It’s as simple as that.
That’s it?
Hold your horses. That’s has one more meaning, it can actually also be a contraction for that has.
But why do people continue to write thats instead of that’s?
It seems there are two reasons for that:
- Some people might not know that the correct spelling is that’s and they simply write thats because they don’t know it any better
- Others write thats instead of that’s just because they don’t care too much about the correct spelling. That(‘)s OK, right?
That’s the whole story?
Almost. Let me add some useless info at this point.
The car manufacturer Honda actually has a car that goes by the name of Honda That’s. That’s some Nr. 1 bull****, right? Well, it is not up to me to judge…The Honda That’s was only meant for the Japanese market, that’s probably why they could get away with it.
Hey fellow Linguaholics! It’s me, Marcel. I am the proud owner of linguaholic.com. Languages have always been my passion and I have studied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics and Sinology at the University of Zurich. It is my utmost pleasure to share with all of you guys what I know about languages and linguistics in general.