Growing up, spelling and grammar were two of the many things that my mother made sure to constantly go over with me. I am a firm believer in knowledge being power, but what I’m starting to see is knowledge is being based off of loosely-based truths and it’s spreading.

I don’t remember how the subject came up, but we were talking about there, their, and they’re. More specifically, how you could use any of the spellings in a sentence, but with context clues, can figure out what the person is trying to say. Now, I do agree with that notion, but it doesn’t make it correct or acceptable. If I were to type, “I’m going over their“, you would know I meant “there”.

Even though the words sound the same, the meanings are different. Their is the possessive case of the pronoun they. There can be used as an adverb to mean a place or location (e.g. “I’m there now.” or “It’s over there.“), or as a pronoun at the beginning of a sentence (e.g. “There is hope.”). They’re is a contraction of they and are (e.g. “They’re going to the park today.).

Like to, too, and two, they all sound the same but mean different things, and just because you understand what is being said, doesn’t mean that you should get into the habit of using the wrong spelling. My grammar and spelling aren’t perfect, and when I catch my errors, I make sure to correct them. I’m not a “Grammar Nazi”, and I don’t go around with a red pen correcting people, but it’s getting to a point where the younger generations are picking up on these habits and soon, we will be throwing out many of the basic rules of English because “it’ll be easier”.

English has many rules, and is very difficult to master, but using words in the wrong context just makes it that much harder.

That’s the end of my rant. I’m sorry if this pissed anyone off. Like I said, my spelling and grammar aren’t perfect, so if there are any errors in this post, or any of my other ones, please leave a comment and let me know.