A couple weeks ago I was thinking about how we use contractions. You know, like to shorten sentences and combine words to communicate thoughts faster. An example of the particular contraction I was thinking about would be, “I haven’t done that yet.” The word “haven’t” of course being “have not“. Now change the sentence to “I have done it already.” You would shorten this to, “I’ve done it already.” There is another contraction you could use though. What about “I’ve not done that yet“? You can combine both “I have” and “have not“. So here’s my question in the whole thing…. why don’t we ever do both?
When you think about it, the whole point of using contractions is to compact sentences to save time and communicate a thought quicker and more efficiently. So why up “upgrade” our contractions and combine three, maybe four, words together. For example, the sentence in my example above would become, “I’ve’nt done that yet.” It still means “I have not” but it’s even quicker to say and look, it takes a six-word sentence and turns it into a four-word sentence. I’m sure there are many other instances where this method could save even more time.
How about taking the sentence a little further: “I have not done that yet, but it is not out of the question.” This could then become: “I’ve’nt done that yet, but it’sn’t out of the question.” This is also combining “it’s” and “isn’t” to make “it’sn’t”.
I often hear the phrase “could not have” contracted to “couldn’t have” but when said quickly sounds like “couldn’t've“. Same goes for “would not have” to “wouldn’t have” but sounds like “wouldn’t've“.
Did you know that “o’clock” means “of the clock”?
