GoatGuy

Then, of course, there are the double contractions, perfectly understandable by most-every English speaker, yet just as universally declared as inappropriate to use in the written word. Such as, I wouldn't've known better, if Ms McCarthy hadn't learnt it into us good... Did you boys steal that pie? ... "'Twasn't any of us, Ma'am" Almost always, the double-contraction is an ordinary contraction, negated. {---} + not + have. The second example is particularly hard to decide, it being such a common Americanism. And there are the entirely linguistic contractions that no one attempts to spell out: 'was' + 'his' ... as in "That was's name, yessiree". Obviously, no one uses the "Was's" form But that IS how a large minority of the public would actually say it. Anyway... a minor in linguistics aside, I rather like using contractions these days in most of my writing, when appropriate. Why not. Life is short, and we really aught to have fun writing, especially since it seems to be something of a dying Art. GoatGuy 1/22/2020