This simply means words that sound alike but have different meanings and spellings
(unlike homonyms, which often have different meaning but with the same spelling).
Many of these exist, and it can help you to memorize or familiarize yourself with
lists of them. However, reading your work out loud will often help you identify
when you have used a homophone. Grammar checkers overlook homophones, so it will
pay off to look for them in your writing. Additionally, a homophone in a finished
piece can often form a humorous statement, which may conflict with the tone of your
work. Consider bears and bares:
Blood bares the burden of carrying
oxygen to the body.
In this case, the grammar checker will think the sentence is technically correct,
because "bares" is a verb. The checker cannot adjust for proper context
of verb usage and does not know that "bears" is the correct verb.
12. Apostrophes and Plural nouns
Use apostrophes to indicate ownership or a contraction. A contraction
is simply a combination of two words, such as do and not resulting
in don’t. Typically the apostrophe replaces the vowel. grammar checkers
will usually find misspelled contractions.
Ownership has a few special rules. Its and ours do not have apostrophes.
A grammar checker will easily find our’s, but can get confused over
its (see section 2). To show ownership
with singular nouns, add ‘s to the end of the noun, even if it ends in "s":
Look at Jonathon’s car. Look at James’s car.
grammar checkers will usually notice if you leave out the apostrophe. However, if
you forget it on a noun that ends in "s" the grammar checker may not see
it:
Look at James car.
Plural nouns that end in "s" simply get an apostrophe at the end:
That is the kids’ playroom.
Plural nouns that don’t end in "s" work just like singular nouns:
That is the children’s playroom.
grammar checkers can usually correct errors with simple sentences. However, they
have problems with more complicated ownership sentences.
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