Last week I discussed using apostrophes to create possessives. I think we can all agree possessives are so common that we often insert apostrophes into them correctly even without really thinking about it. In that way, this second use, for English speakers anyway, is just as automatic.

Contractions

Some words are used together so frequently that, over time, they phonetically blend ("contract" or "elide") into a single word. In the process, some of those words' individual sounds are ignored. In English, this ignored sounds/letters are represented graphically with an apostrophe. Usually (but not always), the apostrophe is written in the spot where the ignored letters would have been.

Our most common contractions are blends of modals (or "helping verbs") and the adverb not.

do not --> don't
could not --> couldn't
must not --> mustn't
is not --> isn't

Some modal contractions don't quite follow the rules. Yet they are still... Click here to read the rest of this post at the Word-wise Blog.


The Word-wise Blog is authored by VAF member AnnaLisa of Admin Maven.


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