10 Grammar Rules Every Teacher Should Know

Rule #10 Don’t Trust Your Spellchecker
They didn’t teach this rule back in grammar school (at least my generation). It is well known that spellcheckers don’t catch everything (their/there, for instance, or to/too/two). Unfortunately, when it comes to grammar, spellcheckers often “correct” what isn’t wrong. This is almost always the case with possessives. Rarely does a spellchecker recognize that one of its words with an ’s added is spelled correctly. Instead, it might suggest that you use the plural form (with just an “s,” no apostrophe). Don’t be fooled into un-correcting your possessives. Simply double check the spelling of the regular word (there are things called dictionaries that can help you do this) and triple check that you’re using the possessive correctly. Finally, rest assured that you are smarter than your computer—at least for a while.

Besides possessives, two other apostrophe constructions often confuse computers (and writers, too!). They are:

your/you’re and who’s/whose

• 
  “Your” means “belonging to you.” It is the possessive form of “you.”
  
• 
  “You’re” is a contraction for “you are.”
  

So: