Commonly Confused
February 19th, 2010
Their, There or They’re
Their is a possessive pronoun
There refers to a location
They’re is a contraction of they are
Like too, two, and to, the commonly confused words their, there, or they’re get messed up regularly. And they shouldn’t be.
Like most commonly confused words getting them right is pretty much a matter of paying attention. Their and there, okay, those can be a bit confusing. Sort of. I myself remember them with another one of those little mnemonic kind of tricks.
Their is a possessive pronoun, that means it will always deal with a person, which makes me think of I, therefore, I know that the their I need to use when talking about ownership or possession of something I use the their with the I in it. Thus eliminating the other there. There. The last of the trio, they’re is also a no-brainer. It’s “they are!” That’s all it is, no ambivalence about it!
Note: As I’m trying to write this blog my spell-checker kept bopping in and changing all my variations of “there’s” to, you guessed it, there’s! I told you to watch out for spell-checkers; the can mess you up good!
Grammar Punk™ Examples:
R E 4 | All I know is that these are their sweaters and I’m tired of looking at them.
P U 2 | Don’t ask me who put them there, Paula, but I’m setting them over here.
H E 4 |They’re going to have to come and get those sweaters themselves.
Write your own sentence using these commonly confuseds.
Leave a Reply