Stop! Grammar Time! Know Your Apostrophes

Your: a possessive second-person adjective, e.g. “You left your whip at my house last night.”

You’re: a contraction of “you are,” thus creating a subject/predicate relationship in a single word. E.g. “You’re getting glitter all over me.”

Its: a possessive third-person gender-neutral adjective, e.g. “The Predator aimed its laser cannon at the Alien Queen.”

It’s: a contraction of “it is,” e.g. “It’s hard out here for a pimp.”

Their: a possessive third-person plural adjective, e.g. “Do not eat their porridge.”

They’re: a contraction of “they are,” e.g. “They’re going to break through the outer barricades and capture our flag!”

There: multi-function word, often serving as an adverb modifying the verb “to be,” e.g. “The the porta-potty is there.” Arguably, uses of “there” as a pronoun (“There are bees in here!”) or as an adjective (“William there, he enjoys a good haggis”) are really just variations on the use of “there” as an adverb. “There” could also be an interjection, e.g. “So there, biatch!”

To review:

Possessive adjectives: your, its, their

Contractions of a pronoun and a verb: you’re, it’s, they’re

Multi-purpose: there

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