Contraction Action

What’s with contractions? Ideally, they’re handy time savers that make speaking and writing a bit more efficient. But some of them really don’t (well, there I go) save you any time.  Take “didn’t”, for instance. I did the same number of keystrokes as typing out the full “did not” and both versions take two syllables to say. So, I think we can render “didn’t” useless. Same with “isn’t”, “couldn’t” and “wouldn’t”. Get rid of ‘em.  “We’ve” is nice, but we usually say “got” after it, so get rid of that one.  I do like “can’t”, “aren’t”, “won’t”.  “Ain’t” is fine as far as I’m concerned. It’s more efficient than “am not” or “is not”, but the grammar folks tell us we can’t (there I go again) use it and I respect that. But that makes absolutely no sense because “ain’t” replaces two different phrases (“am not” and “is not”) making it that much more cool of a contraction.  Of course contractions are never used by someone who is mad at you. “I did not!” People go all King James on you when they’re (there’s one!) mad. 

“Don’t” is great because the phrase “Do not” is too often confused with the word “doughnut”. You’ll notice that there are a lot of Dunkin’ Doughnut shops at downtown corners near the “Walk/Doughnut Walk” lights. Check this next time you're downtown. They sneak that advertising in wherever they can.