Serious Question
Cidu Bill on Mar 12th 2010
Do people really not know the difference between “their,” “there” and “they’re,” or is using the words interchangably simply some sort of Internet meme?
Filed in Bill Bickel, Internet, illiteracy | 66 responses so far
That's Me Mar 12th 2010 at 04:15 pm 1
Sheer speculation on my part, but I think that there are a lot of people who do not understand which is which.
Lindsey ^_^ Mar 12th 2010 at 04:16 pm 2
It’s not an internet meme, people really don’t know. Occasionally people use it as a joke, but most of the time it’s a typo. Depressing, eh?
Pirk Mar 12th 2010 at 04:27 pm 3
I know but I still accidentally use the wrong one from time to time. it’s more a matter of not paying close attention to what I’m typing, I guess.
it’s like when I call a co-worker by a different co-worker’s name. I know the difference between the two people. my brain is just feeding me the first name that comes up in response to the request “name of co-worker”.
same with they’re, their, and there. sometimes if I’m not thinking I just write the first word that sounds like THAYR that my brain produces
Jon88 Mar 12th 2010 at 04:27 pm 4
Especially for those of us who derive significant income from proofreading.
Jon88 Mar 12th 2010 at 04:28 pm 5
Pretend that followed Lindsey directly.
paperboy Mar 12th 2010 at 04:38 pm 6
On the internet, I think it’s just laziness. You’re not going to get a lower grade or get fired, so, why bother getting it right? Typos rule on the WEB. (Now what about people who write the contraction of “should have”- [should’ve] as “should of”?)
Cidu Bill Mar 12th 2010 at 04:42 pm 7
The thing is, I don’t see the there/their/they’re thing as typos (and God knows I know about typos): A typo is when you mistype a word, but you’re mistyping the right word. Using the wrong word is an altogether different thing.
Catelli Mar 12th 2010 at 04:45 pm 8
Yes and No. Heck I know the difference and I still trip up (usually between their and there).
My achilles? its vs. it’s I gotta google the difference at least once a week.
buzz Mar 12th 2010 at 05:01 pm 9
People are pig ignernt.
furrykef Mar 12th 2010 at 05:01 pm 10
I do very rarely use the wrong form, and always slap myself on the wrist when I do. I’m not sure what kind of error it is, but I do think there’s a name for accidentally writing a homonym. I’m guessing it comes from reading the sentence aloud in your head, and your fingers end up transcribing the word you hear without considering the context.
In any case, I don’t think it’s an internet meme (except when lolcats do it or something). Many people really are just too lazy to bother with the difference and write “there” for all of them. I think it’s less a matter of ignorance and more a matter of indifference. Some people think spelling, capitalization, and punctuation don’t matter if the point gets across fine.
To be fair, they probably shouldn’t be spelled differently, since we can disambiguate them just fine in speech despite their identical pronunciation. But, of course, none of us has the power to just change the language like that.
I’ve said it before, but I think the situation with spelling is even worse in Spanish. Of course, it’s much easier to get spelling right because the language is so much more phonetic, but that doesn’t stop people from using the wrong spelling whenever the possibility arises, and many people just don’t write accent marks at all.
- Kef
John Small Berries Mar 12th 2010 at 05:11 pm 11
On the internet, I think it’s just laziness. You’re not going to get a lower grade or get fired, so, why bother getting it right?
I honestly don’t understand that mindset. Your writing may be all that people have to form an opinion of you; why wouldn’t you make sure that it doesn’t leave a poor impression - especially on the Internet, where your words might be seen by thousands of people (not to mention being preserved for posterity)?
John Small Berries Mar 12th 2010 at 05:18 pm 12
Oh, and: My achilles? its vs. it’s I gotta google the difference at least once a week.
Just remember that an apostrophe stands for missing letters. “It’s” means either “it is” or “it has” - and nothing else. The missing letters are represented by the apostrophe.
John Small Berries Mar 12th 2010 at 05:18 pm 13
Bah, thought I’d closed that bold tag.
arvy Mar 12th 2010 at 05:31 pm 14
Catelli, back before I became a teacher, I used to have to double check its/it’s (and I did a lot of writing). What finally helped me (and I haven’t second guessed myself on this in 9 years) was finding out that there is a reason for the difference - it isn’t arbitrary.
Possessive pronouns don’t have apostrophes* (e.g. we write “hers” not “her’s” and and “his” not “hi’s”), so there is no apostrophe when you write “The dog buried its bone.”
Contractions always have apostrophes (e.g. can’t, I’d, etc), so there is an apostrophe when we contract “I hope it is warm today” to “I hope it’s warm today.”
* Indefinite pronouns (e.g. anybody, somebody) do take apostrophes in the possessive case, but they’re a different animal altogether.
I think this is very much related to the original question because some of the errors are due to the fact that the word “their” is possessive and it is quite reflexive to think that a possessive must have an apostrophe, so “they’re” in place of “their” is very common. When this is pointed out to people, they may well begin to overcompensate and begin using “their” when they mean “they’re.” (much the same way that people overgeneralize and use “you and I” when “you and me” actually is correct (i.e. the object of the sentence).
The final error, substituting “there” for either of the other two is, imho, just poor spelling.
arvy Mar 12th 2010 at 05:35 pm 15
I should remember to refresh the page before typing my comments. JSB said it much more succinctly than I did.
Ron Mar 12th 2010 at 05:38 pm 16
The effect you’re seeing is typical of the writing of people
who never or rarely read books. They’re attempting to type what
they hear, rather than typing what they’ve seen in context.
As paperboy mentioned, we get things like “should of” because
that’s what they hear. In the same vein, they don’t know that
“lead” is pronounced “leed” unless it’s referring to the metal.
Thus, they never use the correct “led” when needed. You’ll see
a lot of similar things. your/you’re, “suppose to”, etc.
Lazlo H. Mar 12th 2010 at 05:54 pm 17
@Catelli and John Small Berries:
I always remember the its/it’s difference by thinking of “his” and “her” — neither of those possessive pronouns have apostrophes, so why should its? I’ve never gotten it wrong since I started thinking about it this way.
Now ask me to use the correct spelling of affect/effect without a dictionary and I’m about 50% likely to get it right on the first try.
Kevin A Mar 12th 2010 at 06:13 pm 18
Nice point, arvy, about wanting to use an apostrophe.
I often make the their/they’re and the it’s/its typo. But I always *read* my mistake and fix it. (I think “always” is close to 99% of the time.)
I strongly agree that it is not a meme nor anything like texting abbreviations (despite the apostrophe problem). They just don’t care to check themselves.
(I remember seeing an exhibit of high school science papers at a Showcase movie theater here in Eastern Massachusetts about 20 years ago. Some of the papers were full of spelling errors and sentences with key words missing, … and some of those ones got ‘A’s and ‘A+’s. These were on public exhibit!!! (perhaps I misunderstood the purpose.))
p.s. “separate” is the only common word ending with “-rate” that has an ‘a’ in the middle.
Ted Mar 12th 2010 at 06:24 pm 19
Remember there are three two’s… to’s… toos too’s… in English.
ah screw-it.
turquoise cow Mar 12th 2010 at 06:57 pm 20
I think it’s laziness/ignorance and not on purpose. I see it actually at my job, too, (sometimes in emails from vice presidents and such, which disturbs me greatly). As the holder of an English degree, I am annoyed when it’s wrong, as I am annoyed by the misuse of its vs it’s, but what really annoys me is when people put apostrophes on the end of words that don’t need them.
There is a place not far from my hometown which sells used cars, trucks, and vans. For many years, I would shake my fist in anger whenever I passed it because the sign read “Car’s Truck’s Van’s.” Someone other than me must have complained, because the last time I passed it the apostrophes have been removed.
Of course my boss finds my grammatical pet peeves amusing and so will send me emails using apostrophes incorrectly on purpose, just to annoy me.
Ian Price Mar 12th 2010 at 07:17 pm 21
I know the difference. But I find it’s my most missed grammar mistake when doing spell checks.
I guess in the world of grammar Nazi’ing, it doesn’t rank high on most peoples priorities.
AMC Mar 12th 2010 at 07:17 pm 22
People who can’t spell are loosers.
Elyrest Mar 12th 2010 at 07:42 pm 23
AMC - That’s peeple.
Lola Mar 12th 2010 at 07:48 pm 24
CIDU Bill, I’m really curious what brought this on. (are you reading college applications?) I find there are so many misspelled, misused, misapplied and even unidentifiable words and phrases out there that to zero in on there-they’re-their would require blinders to see them as the most egregious.
On the other hand, some of them can certainly be entertaining when read as written and not as intended. Hahaha …. and then I make one of them and have to eat crow.
FeelinOld Mar 12th 2010 at 08:23 pm 25
I blame the rise of the spell checker, they’re pretty bad at catching that type of thing, but people have gotten lazy. I find it disgusting that hand written isn’t expected for at least a few grades, and don’t get me started on calculators. Of course having said that I have probably have some of the worst handwriting outside the medical profession (I’m sure that’s got to be one of their electives)
I remember typing essays pre computer. (I still have my trusty Brother De Luxe portable typewriter)
Proof reading was important and you did it yourself (or traded with a friend, the one who had made the most mistakes bought the beer) you couldn’t rely on a machine to do it for you.
I may be a throw back, but I always TRY to get it right, I know I don’t but at least I try.
Adam! Mar 12th 2010 at 08:50 pm 26
Look no further than the Fake AP Stylebook for this helpful hint: http://twitter.com/FakeAPStylebook/status/10242241379
chuckers Mar 12th 2010 at 09:24 pm 27
“I’m guessing it comes from reading the sentence aloud in your head, and your fingers end up transcribing the word you hear without considering the context.”
I agree with this. I don’t see a lot of English in my daily life outside of books or the Internet so most of my
English contact is mostly aural or mentally internalised. I don’t usually screw up there/their/they’re nor to/too/two nor even its/it’s but I have been known to mess up are/our on numerous occasions. That may be hard for other people to hear as a homonym but not based for me. Need to proofread a bit more (he
said after finding numerous extraneous words in the post.)
The one I often see (but don’t think I mess up on) is the difference between then/than. That one bothers me.
James Schend Mar 12th 2010 at 09:33 pm 28
Memes use non-typo spellings, usually. Like, “give me moar!!” Nobody would honestly mispell “more” as “moar”, thus signaling meme status.
Or something.
James Schend Mar 12th 2010 at 09:36 pm 29
Adam!
Fake AP Stylebook = one of my absolutely favorite joke Twitter accounts. Kudos, you have good taste.
mkilby Mar 12th 2010 at 09:38 pm 30
I agree with FeelinOld (24) - spell checkers are supposed “enforce” correct spelling, so people tend to think that if the text isn’t flagged, then it must be “correct”, and don’t bother to think about what they have written. In addition to the “laziness” and “homonym” factors mentioned above, there is also simple sloppiness in pronunciation. People who say “aksed”, “impordant”, or “nyoo-kyoo-lar” (instead of “asked”, “important”, and “nuclear”) cannot be expected to derive proper spellings from the fractured audio image stored in their brains.
Charlene Mar 12th 2010 at 09:40 pm 31
People have always made that mistake - and all the others we assume are products of modern ignorance and laziness. It’s just that in the old days the mistake would have been corrected before the item was published. This is the first generation where a large portion of mass communication is via the unedited written word.
The demise of the copy editor has also played a part; if the only editor a writer ever meets is Clippy he’s not going to catch mistakes like this.
Charlene Mar 12th 2010 at 09:46 pm 32
Oh, and most of the people who communicate poorly nowadays wouldn’t have communicated via the written word at all had they lived in the old days - they would’ve dropped out long before they learned to read and write. A perfectly huge percentage of people back in the 50s and 60s were actually illiterate. They knew how to sign their names, but couldn’t have read the warning label on a prescription label let alone write a letter or an essay.
Mark Dalrymple Mar 12th 2010 at 09:53 pm 33
“should/could of” is my personal bugaboo. I cringe every time I see that. “he should of known better”.
FeelinOld Mar 12th 2010 at 10:14 pm 34
Charlene: There are people coming out of ‘high’ school today functionally illiterate.
Hey we can’t hurt their poor little egos by actually flunking them now can we….
David A. Rooney Mar 12th 2010 at 10:28 pm 35
Thayr, thayr, peeble. Doan led it ged t’ yah.
The Bad Seed Mar 12th 2010 at 10:57 pm 36
I think it’s meant to be ironic.
Mark in Boston Mar 12th 2010 at 11:01 pm 37
Then there’s the corresponding meme of when you’re speaking in a video, saying the words as if you don’t know how to pronounce them, and sounding the silent letters like the ‘k’ in ‘know’.
Pro - ta - GON - ist for protagonist, koh - PEWL - uh - shun for copulation, pee - OH - plee for people, etc. [etka].
Tullia Mar 12th 2010 at 11:05 pm 38
It’s a general problem. I get it on student papers all the time, though thankfully not at the same rate I see it on the Internet. Student emails to me, that’s another issue, not thankfully, and the their/they’re/there and its/it’s errors (and worse) abound. I think this is because my students seem to think that email is about as formal as a two-second interaction in passing in the hallway.
When I do get such an error on a paper, if I manage to grab the student, half the time she or he will look embarrassed. The other half of the time, she or he will look confused for a second and will honestly have to think about why I think it’s an error. My assumption is that they write on autopilot and don’t have the internal censor also on, watching for mistakes, and then they don’t edit when done. I have suggested to classes that they have a brief checklist of things they know they get wrong all the time and that they just search for them after they’re done. Most students respond by looking at me as if I were mad.
I get the strong impression that my students don’t think anyone is paying that close attention to what they write, and so long as readers get the general idea, that’s all that matters. The snotty ones are those who’ve had low-grade desk jobs and who think they know that no one cares about writing in the real world, because no one’s ever gotten on their cases about it.
Elyrest Mar 12th 2010 at 11:18 pm 39
A few months ago someone (I don’t remember who, but I thank you) here recommended “Origins of the specious : myths and misconceptions of the English language” by Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman. It’s a book on language and it is just fascinating. Anyone who likes words and how they change would love it.
mkilby (29) - The word asked/aksed was in the book. I was surprised that aksed is actually an older word and was used before time changed it to asked. I have to admit that I grit my teeth every time I hear aksed.
Chennette Mar 12th 2010 at 11:45 pm 40
The things one learns - being new to Twitter I hadn’t discovered that FakeAPStylebook…I think this status might be at the root of the global warming “jokes” that are collected by Bill
“Stories on global warming should always be accompanied by pictures of snowstorms or polar bears.” http://twitter.com/FakeAPStylebook/status/10032551699
Winter Wallaby Mar 13th 2010 at 02:21 am 41
On the there/their/they’re note, here’s a comic that I almost sent in as a CIDU:
http://abstrusegoose.com/151
And I still really don’t get it, but I think that’s part of the joke. And it’s not funny, but that’s part of the joke too.
Winter Wallaby Mar 13th 2010 at 02:22 am 42
On the there/their/they’re note, here’s a comic that I almost sent in as a CIDU:
http://abstrusegoose.com/151
And I still really don’t get it, but I think that’s part of the joke. And it’s not funny, but that’s part of the joke too, I guess.
mitch4 Mar 13th 2010 at 02:22 am 43
Laszlo — The complication is that there is both a noun and a verb for each spelling affect and effect, so you can’t entirely get by with a rule like “affect is a verb, effect is a noun.” (Although those usages are a lot more common than the cross-matching ones.)
[On the off chance that someone reading here is not familiar with them: the noun affect means roughly ‘emotion’, and the verb effect means roughly “bring about, cause”.
chuckers Mar 13th 2010 at 04:31 am 44
Winter Wallaby’s abstrusegoose.com link would definitely have been a CIDU if it hadn’t appeared in this thread.
Rain Mar 13th 2010 at 04:42 am 45
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned the use of “your” instead of “you’re”. I am notorious for responding to FB posts that say stuff like, “Your welcome” with, “My WHAT is welcome?!”
and ps there are a bunch of hilarious grammar blogs out there . . . so when you’re not reading CIDU, those are fun.
Rain Mar 13th 2010 at 04:44 am 46
oops. the Abtruse Goose cartoon does give a shout-out to the your/you’re thing. my bad.
Keera Mar 13th 2010 at 04:49 am 47
As someone who speaks two languages fluently, I have sometimes used the wrong language. My ears then will tell me I’ve said something wrong (to my own embarrassment at times). My brain doesn’t know two languages; it thinks it has twice the vocabulary. On days when I am very tired, my native tongue flavors my sentence structures, even though the words are still in my second language.
I rarely make the their/they’re etc. goof (or the loose/lose one and others) but when I do, I’ve stopped to think about why when I do make them. My analysis is that I’m more focused on content at the moment, and the fingers are typing on autopilot. My brain is trying to keep up and grabs whatever is closest. Like when I mix languages, it’s an external sense (my eyes) that catches the error, not my brain.
Keera Mar 13th 2010 at 04:52 am 48
And to answer Bill’s question directly: If you have no sense of language (or grammar) then yes, you won’t know the difference or will struggle sorting the differences out. Why people do that more than before may be in part due to the autopilot thing I describe above in #46, and in part to poorer education. (The phenomenon is making the rounds in other languages besides English, and one tends to blame poorer language and reading skills.)
mitch4 Mar 13th 2010 at 08:41 am 49
“Your welcome was so warm and natural, we felt right at home.”
Bob in Nashville Mar 13th 2010 at 08:47 am 50
There are a lot of people who don’t know their own language so well. They’re overly dependent on spell checkers.
I find it annoying myself. Also goes for your vs you’re, no vs know, to vs two vs too, etc.
Morris Keesan Mar 13th 2010 at 09:53 am 51
I’m surprised that no one else has mentioned one of my favorite peeves: spelling the past tense of “lead” as “lead”. When pronounced with a short ‘e’, “lead” is a metal and “led” is a past-tense verb.
arvy #14, I think it really is arbitrary. Why should just (one class of) pronouns be exempt from the “add “apostrophe s” to make possessives” rule? I just adjusted, many years ago, to the knowledge that there had to be an arbitrary rule there, in order to disambiguate “its” and “it’s”.
And to address Bill’s original question, I agree with everybody else here: people really are that ignorant and/or sloppy. I occasionally catch myself typing the wrong homophone, and am horrified by the thought that one day one of those might get sent if I don’t notice it as my fingers are mistyping, or if I hit “send” too quickly.
Kevin A Mar 13th 2010 at 10:13 am 52
And I think what people are most ignorant of is how much work it is for their friends to interpret a sentence when the wrong word is used.
Perhaps some people, in order to read their ignorant friends’-who-don’t-really-care-about-them letters, actually train their brain to ignore the differences between the forms. That then carries on to their own writing. Easier for some to be a conformist (and fired) than to be correct and shunned.
mkilby Mar 13th 2010 at 11:39 am 53
@ Keera (46) - Even though I first learned German as an adult, I do sometimes mix vocabulary and/or syntax (sometimes on purpose, more often by mistake), in both directions.
These language problems are not limited to English: many German Internet users have a talent for mangling their own language in similar fashions, and they make some very creative mistakes when borrowing English as well. One of the most fascinating errors involves the pronunciation of the English letters “V” and “W”, such as in “very well“. As I’ve discussed this problem with friends here, I have discovered that many Germans have a hard time hearing the difference between the “voiced” V and the “unvoiced” W in English.
The punchline is that even though the English “V” sound exists in German (represented by the German “W”), it is often mispronounced, but not way that one would expect (as a German “V”, which sounds like an “F” in most cases). Instead, Germans end up pronouncing the English “V” as an English “W”. This even includes professionals: in the German version of the first Star Wars trilogy, “Darth Vader” was synchronized as “Wader” on multiple occasions. Every time I heard “Lord Wader”, I wondered if he was about to go fly fishing.
A similar, but separate error involves mistaking the meaning (and/or pronunciation) of the words “live” and “life”; for instance, I’ve often heard German radio DJs talk about “life” recordings at concerts.
mitch4 Mar 13th 2010 at 12:10 pm 54
In The Pickwick Papers (and perhaps other Dickens or other 19th Century English fiction) there are characters who are supposed to be speaking an English dialect that the author notates by a reversal of some ws with vs.
Mark in Boston Mar 13th 2010 at 12:32 pm 55
In the 1840’s in Boston, the kids were into this thing of using abbreviations for common phrases, like RTBS for “remains to be seen”, and then misspelling the abbreviations.
One of the phrases was “all correct”, abbreviated AC, then changed to OK for “oll korrekt.”
A researcher found an 1840’s Boston newspaper reporting on the members of the Anti-Bell-Ringing Society (a club set up as a joke) using OK for “oll korrekt”, so at least around where I live this is taken as the origin of OK.
(Who knows. Maybe 150 years from now MILF or LOL or WTF will be used all over the world and nobody will remember where it started.)
Keera Mar 13th 2010 at 12:53 pm 56
mkilby #52, Norwegians mix up V and W, too. W is a simply a variant spelling of V; they sound the same in Norwegian). They can’t remember which one gets the “wuh” sound in English, so they end up saying “Miami Wice”. I think perhaps both they and the Germans are trying so hard not to say “V” and sound stereotypically foreign that they end up avoiding it too much. I have also noticed that continental, northern Europeans don’t understand/hear the difference between a voiced S and a silent S in English and tend to pronounce a lot of words with the one S they know - the silent one. Listening carefully to ABBA will let you hear the phenomenon. It’s the ultimate give-away when picking out a non-native English speaker, no matter how good their accent and grasp of V’s, W’s and th’s.
I listen to a Norwegian program on language and sometimes they address foreign languages. The English is less pronounced than in Norwegian, they said, and maybe that’s why it’s hard to grasp it. I’d say the English S is also softer than the S of continental languages. Hisses less, if you will. And that may be why continentals can’t quite get the hang of Z vs. S, either.
Andrea Mar 13th 2010 at 01:57 pm 57
All of this talk about V and W reminds me of a joke my husband likes to tell about a Canadian trying to pass as an American. The Americans are asking questions, trying to trip him up, and say, “What’s that on your foot?”
“A boot! I mean about! I mean…. arrrrgh!”
Tullia Mar 13th 2010 at 04:00 pm 58
@Andrea — okay, I laughed, but I would be surprised if no Canadian ever scolded you on this one. It’s a matter of national pride that they do NOT say “aboot,” but a specifically Canadian pronunciation of the word. It’s true, too. The way I think of it is saying “a bough oot,” and speeding it up into one word. It’s not “oot,” more like a very focused “ow.”
mkilby Mar 14th 2010 at 08:20 am 59
@ Keera - Thanks for the Scandinavian slant on V/W and the S’s.
Both German and English use both S sounds. The difference is that the “sharp” S (as in “Sing” or “thiS“), and the “soft” S (as in “theSe” or “Zebra”) are strongly positional in German: an initial S is always soft, whereas a final S is always “sharp”. This is why a German who wants to say “I like to sing” will sometimes end up saying “I like to zing”, whereas I myself often forget to use the “Z” sound when I say German words starting with S, such as “singen“.
John Small Berries Mar 14th 2010 at 01:13 pm 60
@Tullia: The pronunciation isn’t identical throughout Canada. In New Brunswick, I heard it as a quick “eh-oo” diphthong (the way they said “house” was very similar to the Dutch word “huis”), but someone I knew from further west (Saskatchewan, if I remember correctly) pronounced it as a long ‘o’ (”a boat”). In British Columbia, though, it was definitely indistinguishable from “a boot” to my (admittedly American) ears.
Tullia Mar 14th 2010 at 07:52 pm 61
@John S. B.: Yeah, it does vary quite a lot, but I’ve never heard anyone say “aboot” (American, lived in Toronto for seven years, work at a university and so hear a lot of accents). The BCers I’ve heard have had the most extreme “ow-oo” version I’ve heard. It’s quite unusual to my ears, but my husband, a Scot, says he heard similar vowels back home — I think in Glasgow.
Now, Glasgow, that’s English that I can’t understand until they put their tourist voices on. The only words I can reliably pick up are the f-word and “crrrrrrrrap!”
Mark in Boston Mar 14th 2010 at 07:54 pm 62
Samuel Johnson visited a school for the deaf, and noted that people who can’t hear at all generally don’t make spelling mistakes. They don’t know that “bear” and “bare” sound alike. They don’t write “bare” for “bear” any more than you would write “back” for “best”.
padraig Mar 14th 2010 at 10:07 pm 63
Jumping in late, but I just saw this on the Fail Blog and had to share:
http://failblog.org/2010/03/10/grammar-fail/
I thought lefties were supposed to be better spellers.
CIDU Bill Mar 14th 2010 at 10:20 pm 64
What’s kind of scary, padraig, is how many commenters on that site thought the original signs were correct.
meerkat Mar 16th 2010 at 02:59 am 65
People are often, er, failed by the education system like that, but also sometimes just tired!
Araxie Jul 7th 2010 at 12:50 am 66
During my obligatory college English 2 course, after students had handed in their first essays of the semester, the professor actually had to- on the board- tell us the difference between “there” and “they’re”, because she had noticed this error on some of our assignments. When I later told people how much I couldn’t stand that class (or, for that matter, its precursor English 1), they assumed it meant I wasn’t fond of writing. This was hardly the issue.