Your/You're

OFDM

Does anyone else find themselves constantly interchanging "your" and "you're" when typing? Happens with "there" and "their" almost everytime as well.

Or is it just that my time inside affected me in an unusual way?

aodh_rua

Can't say I do - but I'm a bit of a grammar nazi. I have a compulsive urge to properly punctuate, even in text messages.

toiletduck

no, i dont get them mixed up but always mess up with "where" and "were"

JackKelly

usually ok with you're and your. Quite and quiet always need a second though

Rhyme

Only occasionaly when distracted... not a huge problem.

Sherifu

Its fine when you know what the apostrophe is for.

@OFDM: welcome back to general population

Over the past while I've accidently interchanged cue and queue.

Skip

Nope, no problem with your and you're, but the other day I typed in an exercise: "If you think the statement is true, put a tick under tea"

Blisterman

I always write "you're car is broken", i never mistake "your dumb"
Must be the apostrophe. I always write "it's" as in belonging to it, instead of "its"

irlirishkev

I never mix them up. Likewise I never mix up 'there', 'their' and 'they're'.

As grammar mistakes go, I find they're the most common, and yet most frustrating and interrupting mistakes made in a sentence. It's extremely common even in company-wide emails to see these mistakes these days, and it looks terrible; but like aodh_rua, I'm a bit of a grammar Nazi.

K.

Pythia

Yes it does seem no one can tell the difference between you're and your.
Or there, they're and their, or it's and its, or the one that annoys me the most - people pluralising something by putting an 's on the end of a word instead of just a plain old s.
And on a slightly different note, can anybody spell these days? The amount of mistakes I see printed on official things is rather scary.

Trojan

Your teachers should of taught you better.

cournioni

Your a ballix, you and you're thread...

breadmonkey

Just learn to spell you muppets!

monkeyfudge

I blame spell checkers. They've made us all lazy.

If you don't see a little jagged red line under a word you tend to assume it's okay.

DonkeyStyle \o/

If you find yourself confusing these words quite often, just look it up... remember what you read in the explanation, and then never have to deal with it again.
It's weird though sometimes, there are always a few words that throw me off spelling-wise, just out of sheer lack of use... recently I found myself dictionary.com'ing "drawer" ... which I found eventually after attempting to search for "droor" and "droar" (which just looked wrong)... of course I was kicking myself when I found the correct spelling, but it was just one of those words I had a mental block on for some reason.

c - 13

Trojan wrote:

Your teachers should of taught you better.

Should that be
Your teachers should have taught you better.

Becase I no mine teachr teached me mine speelings gud.

Blisterman

Hardest word to spell in the world is vehicle. Especially if you pronounce it Vee-Kull

irlirishkev

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

If you find yourself confusing these words quite often, just look it up... remember what you read in the explanation, and then never have to deal with it again.
It's weird though sometimes, there are always a few words that throw me off spelling-wise, just out of sheer lack of use... recently I found myself dictionary.com'ing "drawer" ... which I found eventually after attempting to search for "droor" and "droar" (which just looked wrong)... of course I was kicking myself when I found the correct spelling, but it was just one of those words I had a mental block on for some reason.

Did you look up 'combing' too?

(sorry )

DonkeyStyle \o/

irlirishkev wrote:

Did you look up 'combing' too?

(sorry )

Who in the what now?
Are you talking about "dictionary.com'ing"?
That's dictionary-dot-com -ing : v: to search on dictionary dot com.
Like googling you know?

irlirishkev

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

Who in the what now?
Are you talking about "dictionary.com'ing"?
That's dictionary-dot-com -ing : v: to search on dictionary dot com.
Like googling you know?

My mistake! Correction happily retracted!

Sarn

The easiest way to remember is by understanding what each means. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

You're : you are
Your: as in your car

's or s': to indicate possession e.g. John's coat, Jesus' sandals.
John's tired, of course means John is tired.

it's : it is (or can apply to possession as well I'd imagine, incorrect).
Unfortunately my use of , and ; is bad.

Edit: thank you for the correction. Always found its (possessive) tricky.

Pythia

Sarn wrote:

it's : it is, or can apply to possession as well I'd imagine.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! It doesn't. The possessive of it is its.

Pal

Bridget Jones's Diary

I kid you not.

Then again, maybe it is correct.
anybody know for sure ?

http://ia.imdb.com/media/imdb/01/I/48/96/48m.jpg

Actually, they are both correct. It depends on whether you want to use the traditional or the popular style. If the name is "James," we can show possession in two ways:

e.g. "James' car." OR "James's car."

It all depends on style

Velvet Vocals

Sarn wrote:

The easiest way to remember is by understanding what each means. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

You're : you are
Your: as in your car

's or s': to indicate possession e.g. John's coat, Jesus' sandals.
John's tired, of course means John is tired.

it's : it is, or can apply to possession as well I'd imagine.

Unfortunately my use of , and ; is bad.

Yea, this is what I have always thought, but then after PORNAPSTER posted

Your a ballix, you and you're thread

I decided to check it in MS word grammer check ( I thought that surly that was wrong and was intending to correct him )and it came up as correct.... have I been wrong all this time? :rolleyes:

steveland?

Trojan wrote:

Your teachers should of taught you better.

Oh I hate that... oh how I hate that...

c - 13

c - 13 wrote:

Should that be
Your teachers should have taught you better.

Becase I no mine teachr teached me mine speelings gud.

Dot

Alun

RachG wrote:

The amount of mistakes I see printed on official things is rather scary.

Shouldn't that be number of mistakes?

seamus

Pal wrote:

e.g. "James' car." OR "James's car."

It all depends on style

The former is commonly thought incorrect nowadays I thought.

I have no problems with the usage and meaning of your and you're, but when I'm typing I do commonly mix them up.
Imagine a boss who knew his grammer and punctuation, dictating a letter to his secretary, who knows only how to spell, and the boss doesn't tell the secretary which spelling he wants of certain words. She's going to pick one and use it.

That's how my posts work. Substitute "brain" for boss and "hands" for secretary. Sometimes I'm thinking faster than I'm typing, so the act of typing becomes a secondary, unthinking process, and mistakes are made.

OFDM

rkm wrote:

@OFDM: welcome back to general population

Thanks!

seamus wrote:

The former is commonly thought incorrect nowadays I thought.

I think it's meant to be like this:
James's instead of James'
and
farmers' instead of farmers's

If the word ends in "s" but isn't a plural (like "James") then you add 's.
If the word ends in "s" and is a plural you just add '

For example:
"Bridget Jones's Diary"
"The Seven Farmers' Diary"

irlirishkev

OFDM wrote:

Thanks!

If the word ends in "s" but isn't a plural (like "James") then you add 's.

For example:
"Bridget Jones's Diary"
"The Seven Farmers' Diary"

I'm pretty positive that's incorrect. If the book belongs to James, then it's James' book. The fact that 'james' is not a plural word, is irrelevant, to my knowledge. Also, these days, it seems to be acceptable to say either James' or James's..

I think we need a definitive answer on this one!

K.

Blisterman

We really do. Does anyone have a grammer book?

Trojan

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=possessive+plural&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial

The "should of", "could of" one really p!sses me off no end.

Magic Monkey

The worst has to be "careful, or you'll loose it". Funking hate that.

Ro: maaan!

I've decided that there's just as good a chance that I'm right as anyone else so I'll just say this...

"It's" is right for "it is" and for something belonging to "it".

Why should the rule be any different for the word "it"?

OFDM

Ro: maaan! wrote:

Why should the rule be any different for the word "it"?

I blame the English - they can't make cars or languages right.

OFDM

irlirishkev wrote:

I'm pretty positive that's incorrect. If the book belongs to James, then it's James' book. The fact that 'james' is not a plural word, is irrelevant, to my knowledge. Also, these days, it seems to be acceptable to say either James' or James's..

Correct you are it appears. A relief that is.

landser

My God, what has happened/is happening to our education system?

I would advise anyone who experiences problems with punctuation to buy and, more importantly, read, Eats Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss. Great help with all types of punctuation; quite funny also.


One shouldn't worry too much about punctuation and grammar blips on boards. Most are caused by typo's* as opposed to ignorance.

(*apostrophe here denotes abbreviation )

Alun

Blisterman wrote:

We really do. Does anyone have a grammer book?

No such thing ... I do have a selection of grammar books though You'd think that in a discussion about grammar that people would at least make an effort to spell it properly, wouldn't you?

Blisterman

Ro: maaan! wrote:

I've decided that there's just as good a chance that I'm right as anyone else so I'll just say this...

"It's" is right for "it is" and for something belonging to "it".

Why should the rule be any different for the word "it"?

Because "it" is a pronoun.

Ro: maaan!

Blisterman wrote:

Because "it" is a pronoun.

Ok, that may make sense, if you're saying "its" is a different word than "it". Like "he" and "his". So "its" isn't just "it" with an "s" at the end, rather a different word that happens to have the first two letters in common with "it".

No?

Tar.Aldarion

no

Ro: maaan!

Then why?!!

OFDM

Alun wrote:

No such thing ... I do have a selection of grammar books though

Grammer?

seamus

landser wrote:

Eats Shoots and Leaves

My God man, the humour in the title is that critical comma - Eats, Shoots and Leaves - you can't leave it out!

Ro:maaan, think about "it", this way;

"He" is also a pronouns. You wouldn't say "he's car" for the possessive, you would say "his car". You would however say "he's here" for "he is here".

Think of it like one of those pesky irregular things that doesn't follow the rules and you had to repeat ad nauseum in French class.

steveland?

Trojan wrote:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=possessive+plural&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial

The "should of", "could of" one really p!sses me off no end.

i cudnt agree with dat one more

Esel

James's book.

Moses' brother.

Rule I learned: if it has a 'ses' sound at the end of the original word, just add '. Otherwise, add 's.

Weather or not youse use this rule or not is immemorial to me.

Waltons

I correct it when OTHER people use "your" or "you're" inappropriately.
Having said that, our english teacher has us putting prepositions at the end of sentences...

Tar.Aldarion

i will do something and i shall do something,what a bad difference in them...

Blisterman

Its is like the way you don't say "her's" or "hi's"

Hester

Waltons wrote:

Having said that, our english teacher has us putting prepositions at the end of sentences...

Please say I wasn't the only one who was thinking that the title of the thread "What tree do you fall from?" should be "From which tree do you fall?" (Is that even correct?)

I know my punctuation isn't perfect but it really annoys me when people confuse your/you're and its/it's. One of my lecturers constantly uses "it's" incorrectly. It amazes me that somebody can get a Ph.D and still not know basic rules of punctuation! :rolleyes: