Homophones Hurt Your Writing: Yore, Your and You’re

Welcome to this edition of Words For Thought, the blog on wordrefiner.com. Like many of the previous blogs we are looking at homophones. Words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings.  
I understand how important it is to have an error free manuscript. With over 40 years of experience, I have found that homophones give almost every writer fits and difficulties.  The correctly spelled word in the wrong context will not be flagged by most spell-checkers.  Thus creating a hidden error that your reader will find if you don’t. Word Refiner is dedicated to uprooting all of these concealed mistakes and providing the document free of spelling errors that you want and deserve. I find these errors in 95% of published books.

Now onto the new episode!

Yore is a word with very narrow usage. It is seen primarily in literary works to describe a time long ago. It is frequently associated with the age of Knights and Quests; with a few distressed Damsels and an occasional Dragon thrown in for good measure. It saw a lot of usage in the latter half of the Nineteenth and the first half of the Twentieth centuries, but not so much now. It comes to us from Old English, and from long ago.

Your, on the other hand, is a word with a lot of usage and different uses as well. Firstly, it is a possessive pronoun and can be used specifically towards one person or many at the same time. Second, it is used in a general way, referring to something that is a common experience or knowledge of many people. Third, it is used with certain titles such as “your Holiness”. This word has seen an increased amount of usage in the last half century. It has come to us from Germanic and Old English. 

You’re is a mashup or contraction of two words, you and are. There are a lot of words like this. It is used in several ways, such as when we want to describe a feature of a person that is good or bad, it can be used to instruct or cajole and it can be used in relation to space and time.  It is a very versatile word.

We hope you enjoyed your visit to times of yore, and of course you’re welcome.

There they are, three words with identical sounds, a rather dull history and somewhat related definitions for two of them.  If you choose the wrong word the reader will feel like they drove into a pothole and might drive off your road.  Do all in your power to prevent that from happening.  Use Word Refiner, beta readers, critique partners, proofreaders and editors to ensure that your work is error free.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed this issue of Homophones Hurt Your Writing on Words For Thought.  Follow us on twitter: @wordrefiner, for more alerts about hazardous homophones #HomophonesHurtYourWriting, and for common typographical errors #TyposHurtYourWriting. 

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Remember: Words Have Meaning and Spelling Makes a Difference. 
​Copyright © 2015 Mark L Schultz 
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