Forming the ‘not’ form of a verb

There are a lot of verbs that tell the reader that something is, was, or is able to be.

Michael Jordan was a very good basketball player.

Sometimes you want to change one of these types of verbs into a ‘not’ form. So instead of ‘being’ something, you want it ‘not to be’. You can do this forming a verb contraction with the word ‘not’ - add ‘n’t’ to the end of the verb:

Michael Jordan wasn’t a short man.

There are quite a few verbs that can be contracted in this way, such as:

haven’t, hasn’t, wasn’t, isn’t, weren’t, aren’t

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