A contraction is a type of compound word that improves the economy of expression by reducing the number of syllables. Contractions are very common in English, especially in spoken English.
Contractions are written by eliminating the leading letters of a verb and replacing them with an apostrophe, as for the present tense conjugations of to be, where the first letter of the verb is dropped,
| I am | → | I'm | we are | → | we're | ||
| you are | → | you're | you are | → | you're | ||
| he is, she is, it is | → | he's, she's, it's | they are | → | they're |
or for the present tense conjugations of to have, where the first two letters of the verb are dropped,
| I have | → | I've | we have | → | we've | ||
| you have | → | you've | you have | → | you've | ||
| he has, she has, it has | → | he's, she's, it's | they have | → | they've |
As a final example of pronoun-verb contractions, consider the verb would, which loses four of its five letters when contracted against a pronoun:
| I would | → | I'd | we would | → | we'd | ||
| you would | → | you'd | you would | → | you'd | ||
| he would, she would, it would | → | he'd, she'd, it'd | they would | → | they'd |
We note that there are no contractions for the very similar verb could, probably because they could not be distinguished from those of would.
The contractions of negatives are slightly more varied. There are two types of contractions commonly used for negatives: one where the verb that precedes the adverb not is contracted gainst the pronoun, and these are as discussed above (for example, I've not had my coffee this morning); and the other where the verb is contracted against not, the latter losing the letter "o" in the process (for example, I haven't had my coffee this morning). For the verbs discussed so far, contractions of the the second type are
| are not | → | aren't | is not | → | isn't | ||
| have not | → | haven't | has not | → | hasn't | ||
| would not | → | wouldn't |
In written text, a contraction is always signalled by the presence of an apostrophe. However, the presence of an apostrophe does not always signal a contraction: it may signal a possessive as well.
The following set of flashcards will provide you with a fairly complete list of our most common contractions.
Although we have heretofore considered contractions against pronouns, it's also common to contract against proper and common nouns. For instance: rather than saying, "Fred will be back tomorrow", one could say, "Fred'll be back tomorrow"; or, instead of saying, "My family is hoping to meet you soon", one might say, "My family's hoping to meet you soon".
In doing the flash cards, you probably noticed that the same contraction is often used for different pairs of pronouns and verbs or helper verbs: for instance, both he is and he has are contracted to he's. This generally doesn't lead to confusion in practice, because, by convention, we only contract he has to he's when has is a helper or auxiliary verb. For instance, He's a cat conventionally means He is a cat rather than He has a cat; we would generally say He's got a cat if we meant He has a cat.
Also, by convention, we never use pronoun-verb contractions as sentences by themselves. Thus, one respond with "I will." as a complete sentence, say in response to the question, "Will you join me for dinner?"; but one would never respond with "I'll." instead Similarly, one might say "I have." as a complete sentence, but never "I've.".
Our flashcards don't test you for (less-commonly used) poetic contractions which are used to control the number of syllables in poetic meter. Examples of these are 'tis for it is, 'twas for it was, and o'er for over. We also haven't explored multiple contractions here, like mightn't've, which are far more common than poetic contractions.