OT:Favor needed

[Bill Vermillion]

On Sun, Jan 23 16:50 , while denying his reply is spam, Mike Schwartz-PC Support & Services 
prattled on endlessly saying: 

> > | 	Gee, you and JP could probably get to be best bud's... <g>

> > Uh, why do you have an apostrophe in that remark?
> > 
> > --
> > JP

>  I was contracting the word "buddies". (I'm not absolutely
> certain this is a correct use for an apostrophe, now that you
> mention it.) For example, from:

> http://www.americanjourney.net/archer/usage.html  
> 
> [snip]-----------------
> 3) Without exception, an apostrophe shows that a CONTRACTION is taking
> place:
> 
> isn't      it's     won't    can't    don't
> -----------------------

> (The emphasis on the word contraction is theirs, not mine...)

Have you ever wondered why most of the words with an apostrophe
just have letters removed, but "won't" is completely re-worked.
Why wasn't it  "willn't" instead of "won't".    

There are more exceptions than rules in our version of English.
No wonder so many have trouble with it.


-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com