I recently completed an online test to check my knowledge of the proper use of There/their /they're and scored suprisingly low. I thought I knew the proper uses well but perhaps I didn't please can any one tell me if the usages below are right or wrong He was standing over there. They forgot their sandwiches. They don't know where they're going. I thought these were correct but I scored 5%.
Thankyou. So it was the test that was incorrect. Lol. Although I should know better than to trust net tests. I'm studying to become a teacher and thought I was in trouble if I didn't know something as basic as this.
Yes, those are correct. Here's the main contents of two articles I wrote with examples of the words you listed, as well as some other common concerns such as, It's and Its and Affect vs Effect (sorry if the formatting is a bit messed up due to copying and pasting in the forum):
The punishment should be to be trapped they're, where their doomed to read there own writing, without reprieve.
That sentence made me flinch a little, Cog What always irritates me is 'your' in place of 'you're' - I honestly don't understand how they can be confused when I assume most people know 'you're' is short for 'you are'. I see endless amounts of people using the incorrect one on the Internet, it drives me nuts
It was a facebook application, enough said really. I have contacted the creator and let them know, as have a few others from the reply I recieved. They assure users that their (Or is it there?) grammar was not wrong, their (they're?) computer coding was.
It doesn't really matter, though, does it? Whether it's their knowledge of English or their knowledge of coding, the site is flawed. That makes it one of very many flawed sites on the Internet. The best lesson anyone can take from this is to take any information you encounter, whether it is from the Internet or more traditional sources, with a very large grain of salt. This was a case where no one had any incentive to present skewed information. Many other areas, such as medical or legal advice, product discussions, and so on, come with strong incentives to present biased information for or against a particular viewpoint. Read critically, and look for other independent sources that confirm, or better yet dispute, what you find in the first source you encounter.
for the owner/editor of a site devoted to writing [or to giving advice to writers] to be blaming grammar mistakes on anything other than their [not 'they're' or 'their'!] own ignorance and/or incompetence is nonsense, pure and simple!
