Q: Lately, I have noticed a trend to use “is” in contractions that I think are inappropriate. For example, “Jodi’s going to the party.” Is this becoming acceptable? Am I the only one annoyed by it?
A: There’s no reason to be annoyed.
The verb “be” can properly be contracted with its subject (a pronoun, a common noun, or a name) as well as with the word “not.”
This has long been standard usage. In fact, contractions were used in Old English, the language of the Anglo-Saxons. The Old English nis, for example, is a contraction of ne is (“is not”).
So it’s grammatically correct to contract “is” with a pronoun (as in “she’s not going”), a common noun (“the building’s on fire”), a name (“Jodi’s not going”), or “not” (“Jodi isn’t going”).
Buy our books at a local store, Amazon.com, or Barnes&Noble.com.
