Your vs You’re: Learn the Difference

“Your” is a determiner. It can be described as belonging to or associated to someone that is being addressed. “You’re”, on the other hand, is a contraction and is used to shorten “you are”.

Because they are pronounced the same but have different meanings, we call these words homophones. These words are often confused – even by native English speakers. So, how to tell the difference between them? In this IELTS Grammar 101, we’ll give you some tips on telling them apart.

• Difference between your and you’re
• Synonyms of your and you’re
• Use your and you’re in a sentence

Want to learn more about commonly confused words?

In written English, it is important to know the correct spelling of a word you want to use. You don’t want to write “weak” when you mean “week” even though they sound the same. In spoken English, spelling is less important, but pronunciation is. Think about the word “lead” which can be pronounced as “led” or “leed.” Because these words cause a lot of confusion, it’s well worth to spend a few minutes to know the difference: homophones vs homographs vs homonyms. Read more here.

People often use elude when they mean allude, or write allude when they should really write elude. There are other commonly confused words too: Do you know the difference between belief or believe? That is the question of another article where we explain the difference between these two commonly misused words. Read it here.

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