Contractions

“phone” and “blog”

Contractions, Devolution toward Simpler

Many people do not realize that these two words originally were contractions.

The word “phone” — spelled P-H-O-N-E — originally was ‘phone — spelled APOSTROPHE-P-H-O-N-E — which is a contraction of the noun telephone, with the apostrophe signifying the omission of the first four letters (T-E-L-E).

The word “blog” — spelled B-L-O-G — originally was ‘blog — spelled APOSTROPHE-B-L-O-G — which is a contraction of the compound noun Weblog, with the apostrophe signifying the omission of the first two letters (W-E).

I believe that writing ‘phone with the initial apostrophe fell out of favor because it is simpler to omit the apostrophe than to include it. Omission of this apostrophe is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

I believe that writing ‘blog with the initial apostrophe had almost no chance of success because apostrophes are not legal characters in a uniform resource locator or URL, whereas many authors — including yours truly — like to put the word “blog” in the URLs for their Weblogs.

The result is that both “phone” and “blog” — neither of which have an initial apostrophe — have become accepted words in American English.

“… and if you’re school is near by, …”

Apostrophes, Common English Blunders, Contractions, Mispronunciations, Possessives, Pronouns

My wife got this in an email message recently.

Problem:
The word “you’re” is incorrect here.

Explanation:
The complete sentence in the message was “Please contact me and if you’re school is near by, I may be able to deliver them to you.”

The word “you’re” — spelled Y-O-U-APOSTROPHE-R-E — is a contraction of “you are”.

Clearly, the message writer did not intend to say “… and if you are school is near by, …”; that would be nonsensical.

Instead, the writer was referring to the reader’s school, so he should have used the possessive pronoun “your” — spelled Y-O-U-R.

I believe that the common English blunder of confusing the contraction “you’re” with the possessive pronoun “your” is due to the fact that many American English speakers mistakenly pronounce these two words in the same way.

Solution:
“… and if your school is near by, …”

“There’s some slate gray weaved in to the sofa.”

Contractions, Verbs

I heard this last evening during the HGTV television program “The Stagers”.

Problem:
A past-tense verb appears where the verb’s past participle is required.

Explanation:
The person who said this was referring to the colors in the fabric of a sofa.

The verb “is” — hidden within the contraction “There’s” — must be combined with a past participle of the verb “weave”.

Here are some examples of the verb “is” combined with past participles of verbs:

  • There is a piece taken from the pie.
  • There is a pink color painted on the wall.
  • The quarterback is hereby cut from the team.

The first example uses “taken” — the past participle of “taken”.

The second example uses “painted” — the past participle of “paint”.

The third example uses “cut” — the past participle of “cut”.

The past participle of “weave” is “woven”, not “weaved”, which is the past tense of “weave”.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following combinations (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “is woven” — 1,230,000 matches
  • “is weaved” — 47,400 matches

This tells me that Web authors favor “is woven” over “is weaved” by a 25.9:1, which is good but not great.

Solution:
“There’s some slate gray woven in to the sofa.”