Contraction

In current English usage, contraction is the shortening of a word, syllable, or word group by omission of internal letters.In traditional grammar, contraction can denote the formation of a new word from one word or a group of words, for example, by elision. This often occurs in rendering a common sequence of words or, as in French, in maintaining a flowing sound.

In strict analysis, contractions should not be confused with abbreviations or acronyms (including initialisms), with which they share some semantic and phonetic functions, though all three are connoted by the term "abbreviation" in loose parlance.

Contractions may perform the same function as abbreviations. Strictly, an abbreviation is formed by omitting the ending of a word, for which a full point (or full stop or period) is substituted, e.g., Lieut. for "Lieutenant". Contractions omit the middle of a word, and are generally not terminated with a full point, e.g., Ltd for "Limited". However, US style uses more points than British style does, e.g., commonly, in Jr. instead of Jr for "Junior".

An informal type of contraction occurs frequently in speech and writing, in which a syllable is substituted by an apostrophe and/or other mode of elision, e.g., can't for "cannot", won't for "will not". Such contractions are often either negations with not or combinations of pronouns with auxiliary verbs, e.g., I'll for "I will". Informal examples include ain't for "am not" or "is not", and wouldn't've or even wouldn've for "would not have". At least one study has sought to analyze the category of negative informal contractions as the attachment of an inflectional suffix.

A commonly used English contraction of two words that does not fall into either of the above categories is let's, a contraction of "let us" that is used in forming the imperative mood in the first-person plural (e.g., "Let's go [somewhere]"). Use of the uncontracted "let us" typically carries an entirely different meaning, e.g., "Let us go [free]". "Let us" is rarely seen in the former sense and "let's" is never seen in the latter one.

Informal contractions are, by their nature, more frequent in speech than writing, e.g., John'd fix your television if you asked him. Contractions in English are generally not mandatory as in some other languages. It is almost always acceptable to write out (or say) all of the words of a contraction, though native speakers of English may judge a person not using contractions as sounding overly formal.

Common single-word contractions include: St for "Saint" (in proper names), ma'am for "madam" and fo'c'sle for "forecastle". St meaning "Street" (in proper names) is sometimes given a full point to eliminate any confusion with "Saint". Forms like gov't (or govt) for "government" and int'l (or intl) for "international" are purely written contractions.

Writers of English commonly confuse the possessive form of the pronoun it with its compounded contractions. The possessive form (its) has no apostrophe, while the contraction of it is or it has does have an apostrophe (it's). The same is true of the possessive form of "you" (your) with its contraction you're for "you are". See List of frequently misused English words.

The linguistic function of contractions is similar to and overlaps that of portmanteau words. Some forms of syncope may also be considered contractions, such as wanna for want to, gonna for going to, and others common in colloquial speech.

Contractions are used sparingly in formal written English. The APA style guide prefers that contractions, including Latin abbreviations, not be used in scholarly papers, and recommends that the equivalent phrase in English be written out. An exception is made for the Latin abbreviation et al. (for et alii, "and others"), which may be used with citations outside parentheses.