Let's get this straight: YOUR and YOU'RE are two different words!
YOUR means that something belongs to you, or somebody else, as in:
We'll go in your car.
or
Your house is made of brick.
or
The bank will pay you interest on your account.
YOU'RE is a shortened form of YOU ARE and the apostrophe in the middle of the word indicates where one of the letters has been removed - in this case, the letter ‘a'.
We say things like:
You're (as in ‘you are') going out to a restaurant for dinner tonight.
or
When you're (as in ‘you are') in a library, please don't shout.
For whatever reason, many people are using the word YOUR for both the ‘belonging' sense and the ‘shortened' sense of the world. I'm not quite sure why this is, although I suspect that using ‘yr' in text language has been a contributing factor.
While I have no trouble accepting that language evolves, I do have trouble when such usage can have a detrimental effect on an organisation's credibility.
We are often contacted by organisations, whose reputation has been sullied by some form of incorrect spelling, punctuation or grammatical usage.
We do NOT propose that every individual has a complete set of skills in this area (although that would be fantastic), but we would implore you to get things checked/edited before they go ‘public'. Once in the public domain, it can take years to re-establish the fine reputation you once enjoyed. In addition, lost custom costs you thousands of dollars.
Written by Sue Saunders
