“there” vs. “their”
Use "there" for location or to introduce existence ("there is," "there are"), and use "their" only when showing that something belongs to a group of people.
there
"There" primarily indicates a place ("put it over there"), and it also functions as a dummy subject introducing a sentence about existence ("there are three options"), where it doesn't refer to any actual location at all. "There" descends from Old English "þær," an adverb of place that has kept essentially the same core meaning, location, for well over a thousand years, making it one of the more historically stable function words in English.
their
"Their" marks group ownership — something belonging to more than one person ("their car," "their decision") — and like every possessive pronoun, it's written with no apostrophe at all. "Their" actually has a different origin from "there" entirely: it comes from Old Norse "þeirra," borrowed into English during the Viking settlement period, eventually replacing the native Old English possessive "heora" — meaning "their" and "there" only converged in sound by historical accident, despite looking like they might share a root today.
The real distinction
"There," "their," and "they're" are a true three-way homophone set, all pronounced identically in most English accents, which is why this trio produces more mix-ups collectively than almost any other confusable set in the language. "There" is about location or existence, "their" is about possession, and the third member, "they're," is a contraction of "they are" — three completely different grammatical jobs riding on three words that sound exactly the same out loud. Because this pair is part of the larger three-way there/their/they're set, language researchers studying spelling errors in student and web writing consistently find it among the single most frequent misspellings in English overall, often outranking even its/it's in raw frequency simply because all three words are so common in ordinary writing. Grammar checkers today catch this pair reasonably well by analyzing surrounding sentence structure, but historically it was one of the errors spell-checkers alone were powerless to catch, since "there," "their," and "they're" are all correctly spelled words on their own. Large-scale studies of common English spelling errors, including those built from search-engine correction data and large writing-correction datasets, consistently rank the there/their/they're set among the very top handful of most frequently confused word groups in the entire language, rivaled mainly by its/it's and your/you're. Because grammar-checking tools have improved significantly in recent years at catching this specific trio by analyzing sentence structure, relying on modern editing software as a first-pass safety net, backed up by a manual check, is now a reasonably practical strategy.
Examples with “there”
- Put the boxes over there by the door.
- There are five people waiting in line.
- We used to live there years ago.
- There is no easy answer to this question.
- She left her bag right there on the bench.
- There were fewer visitors than expected today.
- I've never been there before.
- There must be a reason for the delay.
Examples with “their”
- The students turned in their assignments early.
- Their house is just around the corner.
- Everyone brought their own lunch today.
- The company updated their return policy.
- The kids left their toys scattered everywhere.
- Their argument was surprisingly convincing.
- The band released their new album last week.
- Neighbors shared their concerns at the meeting.
Memory trick
Notice that "here" is hidden inside "there" — both are about place. "Their" has "heir" hidden inside it, and an heir inherits things, which is a handy hook for possession, since "their" is always about who owns or has something. Because all three members of this homophone trio (there, their, they're) sound completely identical, no amount of reading a sentence aloud will ever catch the error — the only reliable check is a conscious, word-by-word grammatical test applied during a dedicated proofreading pass, rather than relying on how the sentence sounds when spoken. As one last sanity check, try dropping "here" into the spot instead — a sentence that survives the swap wants "there"; a sentence naming who owns something wants "their."