Note to the Internet: Your and You're Have Different Meanings -

Note to the Internet: Your and You’re Have Different Meanings

As I read political blogs and other news sites, not a single day goes by without me seeing the contraction for “you are” (“you’re”) being incorrectly written as “your”, which denotes something you own or possess. It absolutely drives me up the wall. The correct usage isn’t difficult to remember:

You are = “You’re going to the store?” “You’re the one who dropped the vase!”
You possessive = “Is this your book?” “What about your family?”

Now, I am not above reproach. There have been a handful of cases when I’ve sent a text message at 3:45 in the morning and realized I did it after the fact, with one eye open laying in bed. I’m not talking about the occasional mistake or typo – Lord knows you’ll even find those on this blog. I’m also guilty of purposely making articles more accessible to attract more readers by breaking grammar rules (splitting infinitives, sentences ending in prepositions if the colloquial phrase is more common than the correct structure, etc.) … but the key is, I know what I’m doing and I choose to do it most of the time.

Thus, it is not the mistake itself that bothers me. We all make them, including me. Rather, it is an education system failing so miserably that people don’t even know that there is a mistake after twelve years of schooling. What the hell are we paying teachers for? (Case in point … I just ended that sentence in a preposition, which is grammatically incorrect but it is more likely to be easily read by people because it is in colloquial form.)

I will literally trash an entire resume or content submission over that one mistake if it is a pattern and not an obvious typo. Education matters. It influences your earning power and career trajectory. Put down the X-Box controller and pick up a book (and this is coming from someone who played video games for six hours yesterday before spending the rest of my day working on the multi-million dollar proposal we have in the pipeline).