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your vs. you're

This is the mistake people apologise for most and repeat most. Not because the rule is hard — it is one of the simplest in English — but because the two words sound identical, and the part of your brain that picks words while you type works on sound before spelling. Autocorrect will not save you either. Both are real words, correctly spelled, so nothing gets underlined and nothing gets flagged. The only defence is a test you can run without thinking, and there is a good one.

your

A possessive determiner. It marks something as belonging to the person you are addressing.

  • Your application arrived before the deadline.
  • I borrowed your charger — it's on the desk.
  • Please confirm your availability for Thursday.
  • Your being late is becoming a problem. (Possessive before a gerund — "you're" would be ungrammatical here, though almost everyone says "you being late" in speech.)

you're

A contraction of "you are." The apostrophe stands in for the missing "a."

  • You're the only person who replied.
  • If you're finished, we can start.
  • You're going to want to sit down for this.
  • You're your own worst critic. (Both words in one sentence, which is the fastest way to feel the difference.)

Quick way to remember

Read the sentence with "you are" in place of the word. If it still makes sense, you want "you're." If it collapses — "you are application arrived" — you want "your." The test never fails, because "you're" is nothing more than "you are" with a letter removed.