ShmoopTube

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Your versus You're, a la Shmoop. You're in a verbal smackdown with the meanest

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girl in class. It's time to showcase your nastiest insults...

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...and your ability to differentiate "your" and "you're".

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The word "your"...

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...that's y-o-u-r...

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...is the possessive form of the word "you". The word "you're"...

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...now we're talking y-o-u-apostrophe-r-e...

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...is a contraction of the words "you" and "are".

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Let's look at some examples.

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Say Mean Girl comes at you with the classic, "Your mama's so ugly, her portraits hang

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themselves"...

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Or, "Your mama's so stupid, she stared at a box of juice because it said 'concentrate'."

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In these examples, Mean Girl is insulting your mother.

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Pfft. Time to show this chick how real girls talk smack.

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You could go with the nuclear option and tell Mean Girl, "Well, you're so fat that you're

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not just a beep on the radar...

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...you're a beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep."

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Or, there's always, "You're so dim-witted, you probably don't even know that the state space for

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position and momentum states is the space of square-integrable functions."

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In these examples, the words "you" and "are" have been smashed together to form

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the contraction "you're". So, just remember, y-o-u-r is the possessive

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form of "you"...

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...and "you're" with an apostrophe is a contraction of the words "you" and "are".

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And now that you're familiar with this grammar rule...

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...and clued in to some excellent insults...

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...go give Mean Girl a verbal lashing she'll never forget.

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