Get It Right: Where, Wear, Ware, Were And We're

We always say that everyone should know the difference. As we've found out, not everyone does know the difference. If they did, we'd have nothing to write about.

Another of our pet peeves is using the wrong spelling for certain homophones (no gay jokes this week). What becomes even more annoying is when they're not even homophones (OK, so three of these are, and the other two may be depending on your accent). We'll carefully run through them in groups:

Where, wear and ware have the same pronunciation for most people, so you can see how they could be easily confused if somebody said them in isolation. However, if you're writing them, you have no excuse for getting them wrong.

Where - Places and stuff.


Wear - You do this with clothes and fancy hats. Just not in the bath... well...  maybe fancy bath hats.

Damn! Those are some fancy bath hats!

Ware - Goods and commodities. Stuff people make. Ever wonder why department stores call it the menswear and homeware/housewares? You can't wear a table.

The other two words, were and we're, don't usually sound similar or like the three above. Yet we feel they should be mentioned, because for some reason, we see people writing them interchangeably with the other words.

Were - Generally referring to things in the past. The way things were.

We're - This is a contraction of we and are making we're. You see how this happens? We + Are = We're. It's all so simple! It's in the present tense.

How are we now? We're fine.