Mixing up ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ is a rather common problem. But while this might simply prompt a pedantic reply on social media, it will look much worse in formal business or academic writing. Check out our guide below, then, to make sure you use these terms correctly every time.
The word ‘your’ is a possessive determiner, similar to ‘my’, ‘his’ or ‘her’. We use this term when something belongs to a ‘you’ (either singular or plural):
Your handwriting is very neat.
‘Don’t forget your homework tomorrow,’ she told the class.
In the sentences above, the use of ‘your’ shows us two things:
These will apply whenever this term is used. In all cases, therefore, the word ‘your’ indicates that a ‘you’ owns or has something.
‘You’re’ is a contraction of ‘you’ and ‘are’. For instance, we could say:
You are a very good dancer. ✓
You’re a very good dancer. ✓
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These sentences mean exactly the same thing. The only difference is that the second has shortened ‘you are’ to a single word, indicating the missing letters with an apostrophe. Keep in mind, though, that you would not normally use contractions like this in formal writing.
These words look similar written down, but it’s easy to tell them apart once you know what they mean:
Remember that ‘you’re’ is short for two words. So, if you are unsure about which term to use, you can try the sentence with ‘you are’ instead:
Your hair looks nice. ✓
You are hair looks nice. ✗
You are very clever. ✓
Your very clever. ✗
Above, for example, we could use ‘you’re’ in the ‘very clever’ sentence because ‘you are’ fits. However, it would not work in the ‘hair looks nice’ sentence. Other than that, all you need to know is to use the full words in formal writing. And if you need help checking your spelling, let us know.
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