Wed, 16 Mar 2011 10:30:17 GMT
Reading my older posts, I saw that I often omit apostrophes ("wont", "didnt"). This is mainly because I do not like them. And additionally, on a german keyboard, they are annoying to type, since you have to press shift. "Wouldn't" is a short form anyway, and has evolved for laziness, so why should I care about this apostrophe?
Thus, meanwhile I am trying to avoid these forms, writing "would not", "is not", "cannot", "will not", "did not", "it is", etc., instead - even though this sometimes sounds strange, it mostly is correct. But there are even forms where the long form is not appropriate anymore. "Wouldn't you prefer not to use apostrophes?" is an example where I do not know any alternative for "wouldn't". "would you not?" is not really appropriate (well, it seems that some British people would accept it, but at least in the USA, it is not usual to use it). So in that case, "wouldn't" becomes an actual word instead of just being a short form, and thus, there should be no necessity to put in an apostrophe.
I mean, really, who wants a language that uses apostrophes in actual words? It seems to me that many Britains and especially Americans are proud of not having any special characters, especially no umlauts. Are apostrophes not even more annyoing than umlauts? I do not like umlauts either, but at least they are connected to actual vowels rather than just designating that the word used to be an abbrevitation.
The only reason why I will not just ignore these rules and will try to use long forms whenever possible (and if not, using apostrophes even though I do not want to) is that I am no native speaker, and there are nuances of the english language which I might not be able to assess correctly. If this was a problem with the german language, I would just continue using the form I like.
That is because I think that language is a tool, and as every tool, it should be adapted the way that fits best. And additionally, the german orthography keeps changing from time to time.
However, unlike many other people, I do not consider it as an insult if somebody informs me about grammatical mistakes I make in my english posts. If you see something, feel free to comment or send me an E-Mail.
Thus, meanwhile I am trying to avoid these forms, writing "would not", "is not", "cannot", "will not", "did not", "it is", etc., instead - even though this sometimes sounds strange, it mostly is correct. But there are even forms where the long form is not appropriate anymore. "Wouldn't you prefer not to use apostrophes?" is an example where I do not know any alternative for "wouldn't". "would you not?" is not really appropriate (well, it seems that some British people would accept it, but at least in the USA, it is not usual to use it). So in that case, "wouldn't" becomes an actual word instead of just being a short form, and thus, there should be no necessity to put in an apostrophe.
I mean, really, who wants a language that uses apostrophes in actual words? It seems to me that many Britains and especially Americans are proud of not having any special characters, especially no umlauts. Are apostrophes not even more annyoing than umlauts? I do not like umlauts either, but at least they are connected to actual vowels rather than just designating that the word used to be an abbrevitation.
The only reason why I will not just ignore these rules and will try to use long forms whenever possible (and if not, using apostrophes even though I do not want to) is that I am no native speaker, and there are nuances of the english language which I might not be able to assess correctly. If this was a problem with the german language, I would just continue using the form I like.
That is because I think that language is a tool, and as every tool, it should be adapted the way that fits best. And additionally, the german orthography keeps changing from time to time.
However, unlike many other people, I do not consider it as an insult if somebody informs me about grammatical mistakes I make in my english posts. If you see something, feel free to comment or send me an E-Mail.
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