Even after years of schooling, grammar is one of those things that people still mess up.

When you’re writing your social media posts, blogs or customer emails, it’s easy for little grammar mistakes to slip in.

How do you prevent grammatical errors if you’re not even aware you’re making them?

Hopefully, this post will help you.

They’re vs. Their vs. There

One’s a contraction for ‘they are’ (they’re), one refers to something owned by a group (their), and one refers to a place (there). Now that you know the difference between them, you just have to check that you’re using the right one in the right place at the right time.

Your vs. You’re

One is a contraction for ‘you are’ (you’re) and the other is a possessive (your).

Its vs. It’s

‘Its’ is a possessive and ‘it’s’ is a contraction of ‘it is.’ This one can be confusing because ‘it’s’ has an ‘s after it, which normally means something is a possessive. But in this case, it’s actually a contraction.

Affect vs. Effect

Most people confuse these two when they’re talking about something changing another thing. When you’re talking about the change itself – the noun – you use ‘effect.’ When you’re talking about the act of changing – the verb – you use ‘affect.’

Me vs. I

This is one of my pet peeves. Most people understand the difference between these two until they use one in a sentence.

They’ll say something like: “When you get done with the report, can you send it to Bob and I?”

That’s wrong.

Try taking Bob out of the sentence and it sounds weird, right? You’d never ask someone to send something to “I” when he or she is done. The reason it sounds weird is because the “I” is the object of that sentence and “I” should not be used in objects. In this sentence, you should use ‘me.’

“When you get done with that report, can you send it to Bob and me?”

Sounds much better, right?

These are just a few of the grammatical mistakes I often see. Which ones do you frequently catch?