Commonly confused homophones

Homophone - there's a word you don't hear every day - unless you work in a language laboratory!

Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently and which have different meanings. There are hundreds of them. The insatiably curious can look at a long list here.

http://www.singularis.ltd.uk/bifroest/misc/homophones-list.html

But we're only going to look at a handful of very common ones.

Their, they're, there

Their indicates possession:

Their house
Their car
I met Jim and Sally and saw their new house

They're... If you recognised this as a contraction you're way ahead of the pack! It's short for 'they are'.

There usually means a place or refers to an opinion:

There you are!
I'll meet you over there
That's a very good point you have there

There and their are most commonly confused. Ask yourself if something belongs to something else. If it does it's their.

I know you love tests so here's one. Insert the correct version of 'there' into each of the blanks (answer at the end).

_____ going to the fair and they left _____ car over _____.

We're, wear, where, ware

We're. We'll start with the contraction. This is short for 'we are'.

Wear has many meanings but the most common ones are to wear clothes or wear a smile. It also means to deteriorate or break down as in 'if you drive like that the brakes will wear out'.

Where refers to a place:

Where are you going?
This is where I live
I'd like to know where she goes

Ware is a piece of merchandise typically used in the phrase 'peddling his wares'. Often used to denigrate the items someone is selling, but it's not in regular use.

Hear, here

Hear is what you do when you listen to something. This is easy to remember because it contains the word 'ear'.

Here has several meanings. Most commonly it's the place you are now or an exclamation:

Here I am
'Ere, what's your game?

Managed to get an omission in on the second example there 😊

Could of, could've; should of, should've; would of, would've

You may hear something this in conversation:

He could of taken you to the party
I should of gone home earlier
I would of but he stopped me

These are all wrong!

There are no such expressions as 'could of', 'should of' or 'would of'. The correct expressions are could've, should've and would've which, as you now know, are contractions of 'could have', 'should have' and 'would have'.

The confusion has arisen because when some people say could've, it can sound like 'could of', particularly with certain accents. So people began writing these expressions the way they sound.

Will 'could of' ever be correct?

It is possible that in (many) years to come, through popular (albeit erroneous) usage, the expression might find its way into the OED (Oxford English Dictionary), that arbiter of correct English as she is writ and spoke.

But until that happens, 'could of' and its associated brethren are just plain wrong so don't use them.

There are other homophones but the ones we've looked at are by far the most common so I shall burden your eyes with them no longer.

Next - spellcheckers!