Marketing Communications. Write right Tip #2: Your vs. You're
Posted on Mon, Feb 22, 2010
by Cathey Tarleton You're wasting your time.
No, really. If you are writing a blog post for your business, in hopes it will improve website performance, enhance inbound marketing and generate leads--and you flip flop the words "your" and "you're" the wrong way--You're wasting your time. Because if you don't write right, you don't look like the influential expert you really truly are.
It's like making the PowerPoint presentation with your fly down or your slip showing. You're not putting your best foot forward.
And, as we pointed out with "It's vs. Its," silly grammatical slip ups can catch a reader's eye and distract them from your brilliant blog, superb sales message or terrific tweet. Don't do that. Write right.
YOU'RE has the apostrophe. YOU'RE means YOU ARE. The apostrophe means something is missing, in this case the letter "A."
YOUR does not have the apostrophe. YOUR means "belonging to YOU." It's another example of confusing pronouns (like your, yours, my, mine, our, ours and their, theirs) that have driven people nuts since the inception of the English language. Don't try to understand it, just be like Nike: Just do it.
To figure out which one to use, remember this sentence: "You're wasting your time." (You are wasting time belonging to you.)
YOU'RE=YOU are. YOUR=belonging YOU.
Another tip is to reverse it. "Your wasting you're time." What does THAT mean? "Wasting belongs to you and you are time." it sounds like those bad translations for imported products.
Write right.