How to Tell the Difference Between There, Their and They're

So many people make mistakes when trying to use There, Their and They're that I thought we could all use a little refresher on the rules governing these three words. If you have any doubt whether you're using them correctly or not, here are the answers to your questions.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• A brain
• At least partial knowlege of the English language
• A good dictionary (optional)

1. When thinking about writing one of these words, consider your meaning. "There" simply refers to a place, such as, "over there," "here and there," "Where? There!" It is completely separate from the other two similar-sounding words. We also use it to denote the existence of something, for instance, " There is a dog crapping on my lawn!" "There are the dog's owners, just standing there, gawking at it!" You can make it into a contraction, or shortened form, by saying, "There's just no justice!" I don't really know why people say, "There, there," to comfort somebody. Like so much of English, it doesn't make evident sense.
2. Their and They're are slightly trickier, but still, both are completely different from each other. Both, however, refer to the pronoun, "they," which is the plural form of "he, she and it." The big difference between them is that "their" is a possessive, similar to "his, her and its." Instead of saying, "His and her dog crapped on my lawn!" we can say, "Their dog crapped on my lawn!" It's only used to show possession, and it's always a plural.
3. "They're," on the other hand, is a contraction of two words, "they," and "are." We say "They're going to pay for this!" which means exactly the same thing as "They are going to pay for this!" You can use "they're" and "they are" interchangeably; it makes no difference, really, though the contraction, or shortened form, "they're" is considered too informal for formal writing. But you get the gist of it.
4. Their bad dog that they're letting crap there. Let's put it all together in a couple of sentences now:
   
   "They're going to pay for letting their dog crap there!" "There, there...there are worse things in the world than a yellow spot on the lawn..."

Tips & Warnings

• Sloppy writing leads to sloppy thinking. Pay attention to meaning! As you can see, these words all have completely different meanings and shouldn't be that difficult to keep apart in your mind.
• If you have any confusion about this, look in a dictionary. I recommend the Oxford American Dictionary, but any dictionary will do. They have very clear definitions and examples.
• Watch out for apostrophes! They are misused frequently, and there's really no good reason. If it's not a contraction or a possessive, you probably don't need one.
• Your best writing can go to waste if you mess up little details like this. The best ideas in the world won't be respected or noticed if they are framed in poor spelling, grammar or punctuation. It's a sad fact, but true.
• You can't depend on spell checkers to catch this, because they only check if the spelling is correct, not if the word is correctly used. To, Two and Too are similar in this respect, as are Your, You're and Yore. English can be very aggravating; it's almost too flexible sometimes.