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In informal writing, use apostrophes to replace omitted letters in contractions. The most common contractions in English involve verbs.
The contraction ‘d is short for the verb had or would:
The contraction ‘ll is short for the verb will or shall:
The contraction ‘m is short for the verb am and is used only with the subject I:
The contraction n’t is short for the adverb not; it is attached to a helping verb:
The contraction ‘re is short for the verb are:
The contraction ‘s is short for the verb is or has, or for the pronoun us in Let’s:
The contraction ‘ve is short for the verb have:
Note the differences in spelling between these contractions and their homonyms:
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