🏁 There are lots of other ways we shorten words, and use an apostrophe to show where we’ve taken letters out of the second word to stick it more closely to the first.
You have to get how this is done as we use them a lot, for example:
You’ll/You’ve/She’s/He’d/He’s/It’ll/It’d/We’ll/We’re/They’ve/They’ll and many more.
📲 💻You can use this link to a Google Form so you can test you’ve got it.
🔅 Okay with this one now? Go to Skill 16.
🛠 Need some more advice? Read on.
1 We can use shortening apostrophes with we as well as I, you (meaning on your own, or a group of people), he/she/it, and they, eg:
You’ll get lost = You will get lost.
You’ve forgotten something = You have forgotten something.
She’s being honest = She is being honest.
She’s going out tonight = She is going out tonight.
He’d said he would be early = He had said he would be early.
He’s late again = He is late again.
It’ll be dark soon = It will be dark soon.
It’d better rain soon = It had better rain soon.
We’ll go out = We will go out.
We’re feeling hungry = We are feeling hungry.
They’ve eaten already = They have eaten already.
They’ll leave soon = They will leave soon.
2 We can also shorten other things with words like has, eg:
The castle’s got huge walls (The castle has got..)
The countryside’s got lots of places to see (The countryside has got..)
3 We often shorten there is to there’s.. to introduce a sentence, for example:
There’s a lot of snow in winter.
Similarly, we can write there’ll for there will, and there’d for there had.
🚦 Time for more?
🎯 📝 Try this exercise, writing a sentence for each of them using the contracting/omissive apostrophe to show you know where you’ve deliberately missed out some letters:
There is a lot of traffic today.
She will be late again for work.
He is going to miss the bus.
We are having a good time at the party.
They will have a day off tomorrow.
✅ Answers to the exercise above:
There’s a lot of traffic today.
She’ll be late again for work.
He’s going to miss the bus.
We’re having a good time at the party.
They’ll have a day off tomorrow.
🎓 Remember that the apostrophe that joins two words together so they’re easier to say is called the contracting or omissive apostrophe.
Some of these words we use with them are called personal pronouns because we use them instead of having to say the subject’s name every time we talk about them. The first person singular is I, the first person plural is we, and so on.