Grammar Lesson: You're and Your

I'm a high school English teacher. In my profession I see every grammar error under the sun when grading 60+ sophomores' essays. Year after year I see the same mistakes, and that's fine. I get that sophomores are still learning the rules of writing. However, there are a few errors that drive me absolutely bonkers. It's the easy mistakes that are very simple to avoid. The problem is that I see these mistakes made by adults who have graduated from high school and, in many cases, even higher education. My Facebook news feed often makes me cringe as I see these errors being made by professionals, college graduates, and even fellow teachers! All it takes is a functioning brain and some attention to detail. So the first of these silly errors that I will attempt to correct is the o-so-problematic confusion between you're and your.


You're stands for YOU ARE. If you can replace the word your/you're in your sentence with the words YOU and ARE, you will use the word "you're".

• Example: You're the best tap dancer I've ever seen. (You are the best tap dancer I've ever seen.)
• WRONG: Your the best tap dancer I've ever seen. This doesn't make sense because the sentence doesn't even have a verb.

If you cannot replace the word your/you're in your sentence with the words YOU and ARE, you must use the word "your". 

• Your is a pronoun. 
• Example: Your house smells delightful.
• WRONG: You're house smells delightful. This would read: You are house smells delightful. Obviously incorrect.

Hopefully this helps clear some things up out there. Maybe you've made this mistake in the past because you just weren't sure which was correct, and now you know! I'm guessing you've never had it broken down for you in such easy terms before or maybe you learned it a long time ago. That's okay. Now you'll never make this pesky mistake again.