Tip for writers - There, their, they're

byLimaJeson

231 followers

Updated 10 years ago

Welcome to the first in a small series of grammar tips that I thought might help while you're writing your content. I've chosen some very common mistakes that people make but once fixed, can help to make your content look a lot more professional.

Now if you're an English teacher (which I'm not) please feel free to correct me, or to help explain further if I haven't gone far enough to explain, but keep in mind I'm trying to make this simple, so we don't have to delve too far into verbs and nouns and adjectives etc.

Also, I would have liked to add this as "training" but I haven't been a member long enough, so I'm currently restricted. Anyway, here goes...

There

Use "there" when you are writing about a place, for example something definite or concrete like a house ("over there by the house") or abstract ("I want to go over there") or to show the existence of something, like "there is a ball on the field" or "there are many books in the library".

You can test if you're using the right word by asking yourself this question as you're writing the sentence:

• If you've written "there", does the sentence still make sense if you replace "there" with "here"? So, using the example above, "over here by the house" still makes sense so I've used it right. As an extra hint, the word "here" forms part of the word "there".

Their

"Their" shows possession. So, "they lost their bags" (possession of the bags) and "their meals were ready" (possession of the meals).

You can test if you're using the right word by asking yourself this question as you're writing the sentence:

• If you've written "their", does the sentence still work if you replace it with "our"? If so, you've used it right ("our" is another possessive word). So from the example above, "they lost our bags" still forms a sentence that reads correctly.

They're

"They're" is a contraction of two words "they" and "are", so instead of writing "they are" in full, you shorten it to "they're going to lose the game" and "what if they're scamming the system?".

You can test if you're using the right word by asking yourself this question as you're writing the sentence:

• If you used "they're", does the sentence work if you replace it with "they are"? If so, you've done well. "They are going to lose the game" works. So just remember, swap the "a" with an " ' " (apostrophe) and join the words together.

I hope that's helped you out, but remember that there's always an exception to a rule so... just do your best.

Coming up next in the series will be the use of "it's" and "its".

Happy writing!

Mila