There, their and they're

by: Marilyn Owen (14 October 2014)

When working at delivering proofreading services to our clients, there are some common spelling and grammatical errors that we often encounter. One of these is confusion between spellings of "there", "their" and "they're".

While there are many online tutorials on various aspects of English grammar, which cover this topic, here is a short and simple guide to knowing which spelling to choose.

• "There" is an adverb referring to place. It means the opposite of "here". Examples are "Who goes there?", "I went there last week." However, it may also be used in the following way: "There is a wealth of information on the internet.", "There are many interesting places in London."
• "Their" is the third person plural possessive adjective – but it actually means "belonging to them". An example is "Did they remember their books?", "What happened to their cat?"
• "They're" is simply a contraction of "They are".

However, it is one thing to have a short guide to the rules, for those uninitiated in the complexities of English grammar, and quite another to apply those rules to one's writing. That is why it is a good idea to use professional proofreading services to check over spelling and grammatical errors that cannot always be picked up by Word's Spelling and Grammar check.

Find out more at e Learn English Language.

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