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Commonly confused words

When to Use Their, There and They're

Their, there and they're sound alike but mean different things. What each one means, a quick test for each, and the similar pairs your/you're and whose/who's.

  • Beginner
  • 2 min read
  • 5-question quiz

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Published

Their, there and they're are homophones: words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings. Spell-checkers won't save you, because all three are real words. The fix is knowing what each one does.

Their: belonging to them

Their is a possessive determiner. It always comes before a noun and tells you who owns it:

  • The players packed up their tiles.
  • Is that their car?

Memory trick: their contains heir, someone who will own something.

Their is also the standard way to refer to one person whose gender is unknown or not relevant: Someone left their umbrella.

There: place and existence

There has two main jobs.

  1. A place (the opposite of here): Put the board there. I've never been there.
  2. To say something exists, at the start of there is, there are, there was: There are two blanks in the bag.

Memory trick: there contains here, and both are about places.

They're: they are

They're is a contraction of they are. The apostrophe marks the missing letter a:

  • They're winning by fifty points.
  • I think they're right.

Test: replace the word with they are. If the sentence still makes sense, use they're. If it doesn't, you need one of the other two.

Putting it together

They're over there with their friends. = They are + in that place + belonging to them.

Sentence Expand / test Correct word
___ going to the final. They are going… ✓ They're
The trophy is over ___. a place there
___ coach is nervous. belonging to them Their
___ is one tile left. something exists There

The same pattern elsewhere

Once you understand their/they're, these pairs follow the same logic. The version with an apostrophe is always a contraction:

  • your (belonging to you) / you're (you are): You're holding your tiles upside down.
  • whose (belonging to whom) / who's (who is / who has): Who's the player whose turn it is?
  • its (belonging to it) / it's (it is / it has): see our apostrophes lesson.

Why we mix them up

Most homophone errors are slips, not gaps in knowledge: we type by sound when we're writing fast. That's why the best defence is a quick proofread focused on these words. Search your document for their, there and they're and apply the tests above to each one.

Practice quiz

Test yourself

0 / 5 answered

  1. 1. "___ going to be late if they don't hurry."
  2. 2. "Can you put the box over ___?"
  3. 3. "The students forgot ___ calculators."
  4. 4. "___ are twelve months in a year."
  5. 5. Which sentence is correct?
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