I was watching a film with subtitles, and the phrase: “Will you grab her blanket?” sounded like “We’you graber blanket”. I’m Ok with “graber”, but can we drop “l”-sound in “will you”? Answer In a comment, John Lawler wrote: Will you is virtually always contracted to /’wiyu/. In fact, will by itself is almost always … Read more
Example 1: The weather is hot, isn’t it? vs.: The weather is hot, is it not? Example 2: Aren’t you going to study tonight? vs.: Are you not going to study tonight? Apart from convenience in pronuncation, how do the above versions differ (contraction vs. full form)? Answer It’s just extremely common to see tag … Read more
In conversation sometimes I’ll say something like this: What’s that do? which uses “s” as a contraction for “does”. Is this a “real” contraction, or is it incorrect usage of a contraction? Answer According to Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com, “what’s” is short for: “what is” (What’s the matter?) “what has” (What’s happened to the car?) “what … Read more
So, what is the difference between the terms? Is it right to say that elision is a specific case of contraction? Another version I’ve I ran onto was that these were slightly different terms as contraction always refers to the case when there’s more than one word. Answer An elision refers specifically to the removal … Read more
There’s a quirk that I keep seeing in Worm : Whenever the author wants to draw attention to very short, dramatic statements, he refers to them as being “two and a half words.” Examples: I’m sorry. He’s here. I would call them two words, but maybe that’s just me. I was taught that a contraction … Read more
While writing recently, I came across a situation where a character said: There’s a lot of chandeliers in here. When editing, I realized that I wanted to have the sentence sound more formal, and chose to remove the contraction to do so, which is when I realized that it would become: There are a lot … Read more
Is it correct to write: hope you enjoyed the demo and’ll consider the idea Or I must all the way use the entire word for “will” in that phrase? Thank you in advance for clarifications Answer Related: Can I use the “ll” contraction with proper names? This is the first part of the top answer … Read more
So I just discovered iff thinking it was a typo. But after looking it up and reading other answers on here it is a valid contraction of words if and only if. Much like XOR in a mathematical domain. How is if and only if different from if when used in a sentance? Does if … Read more
For example, I believe the following to be acceptable: “I’ve had no issues in the past with this client” However, the following is what I’m unsure of: “I’ve $16 in my bank account.” I’ve definitely heard this before (though admittedly very rarely). Is this wrong? Or is it acceptable? If acceptable, is it considered to … Read more
‘Don’t’ is a contraction of ‘do not’, and ‘do’ is a verb meaning ‘to perform/execute’. Strictly speaking, then, are these two common constructions ungrammatical? a) ‘Don’t do this/that.’ Since it expands to ‘Do not do this/that’, isn’t [1] the second ‘do’ redundant? If so, why does ‘Don’t this/that’ sound so wrong whereas the expanded ‘Do … Read more
