Your - you're (yore)

Beware a confusion, very common among school pupils, bertween these two homophones.

• Your is a possessive adjective like their. It means 'belonging to', or 'of', you, for example "It's your turn"; "Your assignment this week is ..."
• You're is a contraction like they're. It means "you are". For example, we write informally "You're doing well", "You're to write an essay about ...".

• • There is also a homophone in older English, yore. It is an adverb meaning 'in old times'. Now it is mostly used in the phrase of yore, which may be adverbial or adjectival. As it is a suitably old word for a suitably old idea, it is sometimes used by people in a faintly jocular fashion. Don't do so: it is something of a cliché amongst the facetious.