Post by 一姫 on Jan 29, 2009 22:50:43 GMT 9
Two common and related mistakes people make are mixing up "your" and "you're"...and "their" and "they're". They're understandable mistakes, as the words are pronounced the same. However, they have different meanings...and if you mix them up in your posts, it sometimes forces the reader to pause and think about what you're trying to say.
- Anyway, "your" and "their" are possessive adjectives. Meaning, they are only used when talking about something that belongs to somebody. For example, "your post", "your pets", "your computer", "their house", "their food", etc.
- "You're" and "they're" are contractions. They're short for "you are" and "they are". Examples are, "You're late." "You're smart." "They're funny.” "They're not going to make it tonight."
A little trick I learned in school that has always helped me keep them straight is to think about if you can replace "your" with "you are". If you can, the correct word is "you're". And you can do the same trick to keep "they're" and "their" straight. - And one more word that can occasionally cause confusion here is "there". Which is used to denote location. (i.e. "Go over there". "He touched him there.")
- "Then" and "Than". "Then" Is something used such as "It was then that he noticed" or "Then he rolled his eyes and turned away". "Than" Is less commonly used and is for things like "Less than adequate." or "Other than that...."
- "To" is a preposition. Use it in cases like, "he ran to his lover", "we're going to the store", etc. "Too" is basically another word for "also"...like, "I like that anime too." "I have that book too." It can also mean "excessively"...as in, "I worry too much" "that shirt is too big".
- Punctuation is harder than spelling, after all there are a thousand different ways to do it. The most common rule is read through your sentence, and the places you stop to take a breath, put a comma there.