Idk why it's hard for anyone. But on the other hand my apostrophies are all little catostrophies.
Non-native English speakers usually don't make such mistakes. Natives write "by ear" (which is how you initially learn your first language), so they can mix up homophonic words, whereas non-natives usually learned to write at the same time as they learned to speak the language, and they also had the rules and words explained 100% explicitly from the start.
An interesting explanation.
Native speaker here, never had any issues with this or any other common homophone in English. I mean, yes, spelling mistakes did occur, and we now have autocorrect to further screw things up. But I never “learned the rules” and still got everything consistently correct from a rather early age.
“Learning by ear” is just another excuse for laziness and/or ignorance. Pick up books, read extensively, and like anyone else not marinating in cultivated ignorance, you too can utilize the language effectively and correctly.
I once had a teacher who was very meticulous about conditional sentences. She would get upset (not actually but this kind of fake upset) when you said "If I would've ... then it would've ...", and that's why conditional sentences are the only rule I know by heart and I improvise everything else :3
Their you go!
thei're
th'Éire
þær
Never seen this before and its great!
My education greatly lacked graphic design, the use of symbols and tricks pretty much entirely.I've understood the difference since I was 6 years old, I have vivid lucid memories of learning about this stuff in the first grade, but my "smart" phone's voice-to-text still can't figure it out.
Whoa
here (direction) vs heir (people)
Where's the fancy doodle for "they're?"
There for locations
Their for when they are decapitated.
Simple
Reject Linguistic prescription embrace linguistic description.
