Been meaning to poll about this

[jbsegal]

EDIT: Ok, I should have said 'abbreviation' rather than 'contraction' and 'complete/whole word' rather than 'word'.

[Poll #507484]

Comments

[magid.livejournal.com]

Condo is a word short for a longer word, but I think a contraction technically is a shortening of more than one word into a single word (won't, o'clock, etc).

NO apostrophes when pluralizing!

[magid.livejournal.com]

NO apostrophes when pluralizing!
Er, except in situations as described by Redbird.

[skreeky]

It's neither.
It's an abbreviation. This is not the same thing as a contraction.

[blk]

what she said.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

I think "abbreviation" as a technical term is reserved for shortened forms that require a period because they are understood to inflate to their longer forms (and that's how they are pronounced): Mr., Co., vs., etc. Contractions likewise use an apostrophe to indicate where letters or syllables have been elided: he's, isn't, rock'n'roll, bo'sun, 'Net, 'puter.

Words like condo and phone, on the other hand, though they are truncated/shortened forms and essentially colloquial in nature, have evolved into stand-alone words and are therefore written without any punctuation (phone having once been written as 'phone, and so on).

Strunk and White, rule 1

[redbird]

It doesn't matter whether it's a contraction: in general, the plural in English is formed by adding s or es, without an apostrophe. There are exceptions to the plural form (e.g., sky/skies, child/children, and sheep/sheep), but they still don't take apostrophes. Single letters used as letters are pluralized with 's, as in "mind your p's and q's", as are some words when discussed as words, rather than used as normal nouns, especially contractions that already contain apostrophes, such as "don't's". And that can lead to oddities like "do's and "don't's". But the plural of radar is radars, and the plural of condo is condos.

[redbird]

There are no right answers to the wrong questions: "is it a word or a contraction?" is no more valid a question than "is it a word or a pronoun?" Contractions are a kind of English word.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

the standard, according to what I was reading last night (AP Stylebook and Little, Brown) is that short forms of words that are 'common' are treated as words. Little, Brown (1981) mentioned copter as an example of it (my copy is a little old), but the 1999 AP Stylebook refers specifically to: the condo she lives in, the condos she owns, but says for possessive, use the full word, as in: the condominium's owner.

Admittedly, they've had 6 years to change this again, but that's what I have :-)

[mama-pipa.livejournal.com]

I chose contraction, but really I don't think its accurate, its more like an abbreviation, like "phone" for "telephone"

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

Last week, I saw someone wearing a T-shirt that said:

STOP
THINK
DO YOU REALLY NEED
THAT APOSTROPHE?

[blk]

That ROCKS.

[fraterrisus]

i NEED one of those.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

That is a truly spiffy shirt indeed!

[luckylefty.livejournal.com]

fwiw, merriam-webster and the scrabble dictionary agree that condo and condos are both words.

"Word or contraction" seems like a strange question to me. I think of contractions as a subset of words, not as a separate category. The fact that they are spelled with an apostrophe, and aren't legal to play in scrabble, doesn't make them "not words" for me.

[foms.livejournal.com]

In general, I agree with the above. English is silly in some of its rules about pluralization and apostrophizing (see its, a possessive, above). Some of it is for convenience of type-setting, some for ease of reading (think of it as consonance rules for the eye - it's akin to serif/sans-serif rules).

Either way, in pluralizing year-names that have been written numerically, I know of no reason for the rule of apostrophizing. Why is 1970's better than 1970s?

I have seen professional copy editors espouse the idea that one should write till for until. Some have even claimed that it is not a short form but a separate word. They specifically mention that 'til is forbidden.

A contraction is formed by omitting one or several letters from a word or group of words and replacing those letters with an apostrophe. This rule works for plurals just as well as for singulars. What happens if one decides to contract the word condominiums by taking out both letter ems, both eyes, the en, and the you? Condo’s.

I still don’t approve of these gymnastics but the rationale works.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

I hate when people use an apostrophe to form a plural... and unfortunately I see a lot of it. Hisssssss.

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

Are you sure that's not "Hiss's'ss's"?

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

(shudder)

[42itous.livejournal.com]

From Firesign Theatre's early days:
"Shadow Valley Condoms: if you lived here, you'd be home by now."