An entry of monumental importance.

I'd like to draw attention to something that's been plaguing my mind ever since I started college. An intellectual conundrum. A philosophical and sociological mystery.

Why is it that so many people are unable to differentiate between "your" and "you're"?

I mean, I get that they sound similar. The English language is tricky like that. We are graced with many perplexing groups of words that sound exactly alike. For example, "blue" and "blew". They sound similar, but you better make damn sure you can spell them correctly. Like if you're telling your friend over AIM that her boyfriend's cheating on her. If you say, "Damn, girl. Some skank blue your boyfriend last night" your friend will go "WTF?" I would. So the different spelling of homophones is of critical importance.

Anyway, back to "your" and "you're". Way back in the golden days of first or second grade, we learned what a contraction is. Not the thing that happens when you're having a baby. I even had to recite them, along with all the other snot-nosed kids in the class: "Will not. Won't. Can not. Can't. Should not. Shouldn't." You would think they'd be pretty well ingrained by now. "You're" is simply the contraction of "you are". It even has a convenient little "e" at the end of it to remind us that where we see only one word, there are actually TWO words implied (the second word being "are"). Amazing, isn't it? No, not really. It's just proper grammar.

If you don't believe that the difference between "your" and "you're" is important, let's return to the example scenario created above. Boyfriend is cheating on Girlfriend with Slut. One day, Boyfriend decides to dump Slut over AIM because Boyfriend's mom disapproves of Slut. What he wants to say is:

I think you're slutty. Mom hates your ugly face.

Because he didn't read Rhea's blog (and he hasn't learned about punctuation yet either), his eloquent dismissal reads:

I think your slutty Mom hates you're ugly face.

Which...doesn't make a whole lot of sense.