Seeking Grammar Police Ruling - Typo's

[Geoff Bannister]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, Lee Kaiwen <leekaiwen at ...> wrote:

bboyminn:
> > Consider, for example "int'l" for 'international' . The "'l"
> > logically doesn't make it plural

CJ:
> Of course not, since the plural morpheme in English is "s". But note 
> that in this example, the apostrophe denotes an omission from the middle 
> of the word, not the end.  Generally, when we omit stuff from the end of 
> a word, we call it an abbreviation, not a contraction, and we terminate 
> it with a period. To use your example, if we were to omit the "l" along 
> with the "ernationa" we'd write it: "int." not "int'".

Geoff:
I hope that my snipping fits in with what I want to add. This discussion is 
getting rather convoluted.

What you also need to take on board is that, in UK English at least, there is 
a distinction between contractions using apostrophes and some words 
which are more frequently used in a truncated form. So, in written English, 
conversational and informal speech is indicated with words such as "isn't", 
"wouldn't" and "they've" whereas some words regularly used in a contracted 
form in more formal speech lack apostrophes... examples such as "Maths", 
"vet" or "exam" and "exams".

A form such as "Int'l" in UK English is unusual. I see it as being on a par 
with road markings. At some junctions, where lanes are marked with their 
destinations painted on the roads to help visitors, this sort of labelling is 
used if the lane lacks the width for the word. Examples in my home area 
would be "B'tol" for "Bristol", "T'ton" for "Taunton" (and occasionally the 
hideous US "Thru" for "Through". Yuck).