Yeah, this one bugs Doyce as much as it bugs me. How to Use There, Their and They’re. A nice test:
Test your usage. When you use any of these three words, get in the habit of asking yourself these questions:
- If you wrote there, will the sentence still make sense if you replace it with here? If so, you’re using it correctly.
- If you chose their, will the sentence still make sense if you replace it with our? If so, you’ve chosen the correct word.
- If you used they’re, will the sentence still make sense if you replace it with they are? If so, you’re on the right track!
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I see this all the time in student papers. It might be the most common error that I see.
Yup.
Had someone asking about “effect” vs “affect” the other day. I gave them some general rules, including noting that “effect” is a noun and “affect” is a verb — until I realized that there were cases when effect *is* used as a verb and affect as a noun.
*sigh*
Affect vs. effect is another common mistake. So is whether vs. weather. The two I cannot understand are when students write “our” where they should have written “are”, or they write “no” when they should have written “know”. I guess with a certain accent “our” and “are” sound kind of similar, but it still seems like carelessness to me.
I got so frustrated with the fact that many students don’t seem to proofread their papers that I wrote a paragraph containing as many correctly-spelled but incorrectly-used words as I could make fit. Then I posted it on the door of my office at school. The title will give you the idea: “Nun cents four stew dents.” The interesting thing is that some people get it right away, and are able to read the paragraph easily. Others don’t get it, it is hard for them to read, and they may not get the whole thing. I haven’t tried to figure out if the ability to read it corresponds to anything else or not, but I’d be interested to know if it does.
I think your way off on you’re post.
Well, no, I don’t, but I wanted to illustrate the egregious error that tightens my sphincter most often.
I see “were” for “where” frequently, but that’s primarily in online games (“were is the trainer?”), and may – may – just be a typo. But I’m skeptical.
Mine isn’t usually written, although there’s no reason it can’t be. It’s “orientated.” It makes my skin crawl. I know it’s a traditionally British usage, but I don’t think that folks on this side of the pond have taken it from the Brits. I think they don’t undestand that you can’t just take the “ion” off the end of orientation and add an “ed.” Do you think they even teach the parts of speech anymore?
That’s a backformation. Apparently most people learn the word “orientation” before “orient,” so they follow the usual procedure of dropping the “-tion” and adding “-te.”
If we’re going to get into spoken English, I can’t stand hearing “negotiate” pronounced “ne-go-see-ate”! You don’t say “nay-see-on” or “ra-see-on-al,” or anything else that way, so why this one word? (I blame Patrick Stewart!)