Contractions
A contraction is a word that is formed by combining two words. In a contraction, an apostrophe shows where one or more letters have been left out. Contractions are commonly used in informal writing but not in formal writing.
- I do not like ice cream.
- I don’t like ice cream
Notice how the words do and not have been combined to form the contraction don’t. The apostrophe shows where the o in not has been left out.
- We will see you later.
- We’ll see you later.
Look at the chart for some examples of commonly used contractions.
| aren’t | are not |
| can’t | cannot |
| doesn’t | does not |
| don’t | do not |
| isn’t | is not |
| he’ll | he will |
| I’ll | I will |
| she’ll | she will |
| they’ll | they will |
| you’ll | you will |
| it’s | it is, it has |
| let’s | let us |
| she’s | she is, she has |
| there’s | there is, there has |
| who’s | who is, who has |
Its vs It’s
Be careful not to confuse it’s with its. It’s is a contraction of the words it and is. Its is a possessive pronoun.
- It’s cold and rainy outside. (It is cold and rainy outside.)
- The cat was chasing its tail. (Shows that the tail belongs to the cat.)
When in doubt, substitute the words it is in a sentence. If sentence still makes sense, use the contraction it’s.
Omission
Just as apostrophes are used in contractions to indicate that some letters are omitted (don’t omits the o in not), so too do they indicate omission in other circumstances.
An old-fashioned example can be seen in four o’clock, where the apostrophe indicates the omission of the phrase of the. So four o’clock fully means four of the clock.
A more common modern example is the omission of numerals when writing a year or decade. So if you’re discussing the decade of the 1980s, you could omit the first two numerals with an apostrophe and write the ’80s. Remember, as noted above, that apostrophes are never used to create plurals, so writing the 1980’s or the 80’s to mean the plural years is technically wrong in formal writing.
Attribution
This chapter is an adaptation of Apostrophes by Josh Woods, editor and contributor, as well as an unnamed author (by request from the original publisher), and other authors named separately and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. You can download this book free at The Writing Textbook Copyright © 2021.
