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your ~ you‘re ~ yours

[‘your’ and ‘you’re’ have the same pronunciation that rhymes with ‘door’, ‘yours’ has the additional ‘z’ sound at the end]

“Your” (determiner – possessive adjective of the second person pronoun “you”) means ‘of, belonging to, made by, said by or done by; {used before titles of important people – Your Honour, Your Majesty, etc.}; belonging or of a person or people in general – of anybody, belonging to everybody’,

e.g.

Is that girl your sister?

I can’t carry your bag; it weighs a ton!

The accused said to the judge, “Your Honour, I am not guilty.”

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“You’re” is the short form of ‘you are’:

e.g.

You’re early for your class today.

I said to her, “Thank you.”       →     → She replied with a smile, “You’re welcome.”

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“Yours” (possessive pronoun of the second person pronoun “you”) means ‘something or someone belonging or connected to ‘you’’,

e.g.

If my computer doesn’t work, I’ll take yours.      [i.e. I’ll take your computer – the computer that belongs to you]

Is Sam a friend of yours?

If you want the job, it’s yours for the asking.        [i.e. with your abilities and qualifications, you can get it very easily]

{Very Important: The possessive pronoun “yours” does not take an apostrophe (’) between ‘r’ and ‘s’! [Your’s is wrong]

In letter writing: ‘Yours faithfully’ is used to close a formal letter that beings with the opening salutation “Dear Sir” or “Dear Madam”; and ‘Yours sincerely or Yours truly (British English)/Sincerely Yours (American English)’ is used to close a formal letter that begins with the name and title of the person in the opening salutation “Dear Mr. Mathew” or “Dear Ms Mary”.}

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