Some simple tricks

[mistertassie]

Everybody has different weaknesses when it comes to writing. Personally, I have frequent trouble with double consonants (I'll write "ommitting" instead of the correct "omitting") and is it an a or an e in the last syllable of words like independence and attendance. I haven't come across any good mental tricks to help me with those issues, but I have found many tricks to help people remember the correct way to spell some other problem words/phrases:

1. A lot. Alot isn't a word. When people write "alot", what they mean is a lot. Nobody ever writes "abunch" or "atonne", but "alot" gets constant use. So how do you remember how to get it right? There is a lot of space between a and lot.
2. Definitely. This one shows up as definately all over the place. Worse still, it gets mutated in the real word "defiantly" quite frequently when someone has a typo while trying to spell definitely the wrong way.  What's the trick to never make this mistake again? There is definitely no A in definitely.
3. Their/there/they're. This is a biggie. So big it will get revisited again later in an entry all on homonyms. There is no surer way to signal your inability to use English properly than mixing up these three words. In oral communication, when we hear the sound, our brains use the context of the rest of the sentence to automatically hear the right word, but in written communication, even though the reader will still likely know what word you meant, the mistake sits there, visibly proclaiming itself to the world. So here are the tricks to help you keep these three very different words straight:

• There. There is a multi-duty word that can be a noun, adverb, pronoun or interjection. But the most common uses of there involve places/placements of things or the existence (I used spell check to make sure it wasn't existance) or state of being of something. Because there is usually a place word, we'll use another place word to help us remember. The trick? There is here with a t at the start.
• Their. Their is a possessive pronoun indicating that the thing being talked about belongs to a particular group of people. I find it interesting that while people write there when they mean their all the time, I've never seen anyone write theres when they mean theirs. There must be something magic about that one s. So what's the trick for this one? They give their property to their heir.
• They're. We finally come to the easiest of the three. They're is simply a contraction of "they are." The apostrophe is taking the place of the a in are. It saves us all a syllable but costs untold confusion. The trick? Ask yourself if you are saying "they are." If so, you need to use they're.

So there are a few little mental tricks that will definitely help you to remember the proper spelling or usage of some words that are misused a lot. Remember the tricks for these words and they're never going to trouble you again with their confusion.