Soap Box Time

I try really hard not to let the English teacher in me get out in public places....but COME ON! I just, literally - like two seconds ago, saw a 'professional' author use the wrong spelling of a word in an online article. My blood started boiling and I thought "J, calm down! Write a post about this so other people can avoid making the same mistake."

So, I know that I make mistakes and I don't always spell check and proofread like I should....BUT....let's talk about homophones. I won't bore you and talk about all of them. Nope. I'm not that mean. I would like people to actually read my blog! And I do realize that we learned this in elementary school and maybe in junior high/middle school. In all fairness, it's been quite a while!

Homonyms 101

The first one is the one that I see so often and really drives me bonkers!

Your and you're

Your is a possesive pronoun

You're is a contraction (shortened from you are)

A good way to tell if you're using the right one is to try to substitue *you are* in the sentence.

Take the sentence above and let's substitute * you are* for you're:

A good way to tell if you are using the right one is to .........blah, blah, blah. It works - so I did use the correct homonym.

Another example:

I'm only doing this mini-tutorial for you're own good.

Now substitute: I'm only doing this mini-tutorial for you are own good. Oops. Wrong homonym. I'll change it.

I'm only doing this mini-tutorial for your own good. Really!

Some other commonly misused homonyms:

• their/they're/there
• too/to/two
• whole/hole
• see/sea
• deer/dear
• its/it's
• know/no
• weather/whether
• by/buy/bye ( I'm sure that 'N Sync was singing about homonyms :) "I'm doing this tonight...I know this can't be right..." FYI - I had to look those lyrics up. I don't know the words by heart.)