Overview
There are fewer words in the English language that trip people up quite like “there,” “their,” and “they’re.” Whether you’re scrolling social media or reading emails, it’s almost certain you’ll come across someone who accidentally swaps one “there” for another. Even you, yourself, have likely done it.
But does it matter? Do people really judge us for misusing such a commonly misused word? Research on the science of grammar suggests that basic spelling errors may affect others’ perceptions of us, particularly how competent we seem. Thus, it’s possible that misusing common homophones—words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings—such as there, their, and they're could make us appear less competent as well.
Context may matter. Swapping a “their” for a “there” in a social media post may carry less weight than in a classroom or in a work email. Gender may also matter. Prior research suggests that women are slightly less likely to purchase products from ads with typos or hire job applicants whose résumés contain grammatical errors. But such studies have been limited in scope and context.
There are fewer words in the English language that trip people up quite like “there,” “their,” and “they’re.” Whether you’re scrolling social media or reading emails, it’s almost certain you’ll come across someone who accidentally swaps one “there” for another. Even you, yourself, have likely done it.
But does it matter? Do people really judge us for misusing such a commonly misused word? Research on the science of grammar suggests that basic spelling errors may affect others’ perceptions of us, particularly how competent we seem. Thus, it’s possible that misusing common homophones—words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings—such as there, their, and they're could make us appear less competent as well.
Context may matter. Swapping a “their” for a “there” in a social media post may carry less weight than in a classroom or in a work email. Gender may also matter. Prior research suggests that women are slightly less likely to purchase products from ads with typos or hire job applicants whose résumés contain grammatical errors. But such studies have been limited in scope and context.
The Experiment
To answer these questions, we conducted a large-scale grammar experiment with over 1,000 people to test whether misusing there, their, and they’re affects perceptions of one’s competence, and whether context or reader gender matter.
1,200 people were recruited from the research platform Prolific to take part in a survey experiment that involved reading a series of short paragraphs. One of these paragraphs included the words “there,” “their,” and “they’re,” only we randomly varied whether usage of these words was correct or incorrect. We also varied the nature of the paragraph itself, with half of participants reading a hypothetical social media post, and the other half reading a hypothetical email.
Each participant was randomly assigned to read one of the following texts below, with that text randomly assigned to include either the correct or incorrect usage of the “there,” “their,” and “they’re” (correct usage in [brackets]).
Imagine you’re scrolling Facebook and see the following post from an acquaintance:
"There [They're] trying to tell us that we don’t understand the economy, but everyday people know more than you might think. We read the news. We talk to each other. Sure, their [there] are plenty of people who don’t. But they’re [their] opinions don’t represent all of us."
"There [They're] trying to tell us that we don’t understand the economy, but everyday people know more than you might think. We read the news. We talk to each other. Sure, their [there] are plenty of people who don’t. But they’re [their] opinions don’t represent all of us."
Imagine you receive the following email from an office assistant at your company:
From: Jamie Sanders
Sent: Tuesday, Sep 19, 2023, 2:07 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Questions
Good afternoon,
Their [There] are a number of questions that have come up about HQ’s new filing system. That’s okay. You can submit your questions via they’re [their] contact form. It’s a new system, so there [they're] expecting it will take some time to master.
Best,
Jamie
From: Jamie Sanders
Sent: Tuesday, Sep 19, 2023, 2:07 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Questions
Good afternoon,
Their [There] are a number of questions that have come up about HQ’s new filing system. That’s okay. You can submit your questions via they’re [their] contact form. It’s a new system, so there [they're] expecting it will take some time to master.
Best,
Jamie
After reading the text, participants were asked a survey question to measure our outcome of interest, perceived competence. Participants were asked, “How smart do you think this person is? (1 = Not at all, 7 = Very much)” with answer options provided on a 1-7 survey scale.
Results
Our analysis of all 1,200 responses revealed that misusing “there,” “their,” and “they’re” caused the writer’s perceived intelligence to drop 15.7%, with an average rating of 3.91 relative to 4.64 on a 1-7 scale (p < 0.001). For the statistics aficionados, the effect equates to about half of a standard deviation, a medium-sized difference. Anecdotally, we even received messages from participants correcting our misuse and instructing us on how to use the words correctly.
Context also matters. We found a significant difference in the effect when comparing the work email vs. the social media post, the greater sin being the misuse of “there” in the workplace. Whereas misusing “there” in a Facebook post reduced perceived intelligence by about 10%, or 0.45 points on a 1-7 scale, misuse in a work email reduced perceived intelligence by about 23%, or 1.06 points (p < 0.001).
We also uncovered another interesting factor that may affect how smart you’re perceived to be when misusing there, their, or they’re—the gender of your readers. The data suggest that women may be more likely to judge (or perhaps just more likely to notice) when a there variant is misused. While men rated our author 0.52 points (11.4%) lower when misusing there, their, and they’re, women rated our author 0.93 points (20.0%) lower (p = 0.013).
Conclusion
Cavalier use of the word “there” and its variants may carry consequences for your perceived competence. In this study, mixing up there, their, and they’re in either a social media post or a work email reduced how smart the writer seemed by 15-25%. The effect is particularly pronounced in work emails and when one’s audience is predominantly female.
The results echo similar research we’ve conducted. For example, in one study, typos in the form of spelling errors reduced how smart, nice, likable, and trustworthy a person seemed. Taken together, the results suggest significant benefits from committing to memory the appropriate uses of the words there, their, and they’re.
Methods Note
For our analyses, two-sample t-tests were used to test for significant differences in competence between the correct and incorrect "there" conditions. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analyses with interaction terms were used to evaluate potential demographic differences and interactions (e.g., gender, age). Our statistical significance threshold was a p-value below 0.05. The data and survey materials used for this study are available upon request.