Verb contractions

In everyday speech we shorten a lot of verbs:

I’m going to the shops.

‘I’m’ is the shortened version of ‘I am’.

He’d be a good tennis player.

‘He’d’ is the shortened version of ‘he would’.

These shortened words are known as verb contractions. They are usually formed by shortening the words involved and mashing them together with an apostrophe somewhere in the middle. The majority of verb contractions are formed in two types of situations:

When you’re combining a pronoun with certain verbs.
When you’re forming the ‘not’ version of certain verbs.

Here are some of the verbs that you can combine with a pronoun to form a verb contraction.

When you’re combining a pronoun with the ‘to be’ verb.

Instead of saying something like:

I am going to the beach

you mash together the ‘I’ and the ‘am’ by dropping the ‘a’ and put an apostrophe between them:

When you’re combining a pronoun with the verb ‘will’.

There’s a very common Australian saying that is used when someone is telling someone else not to worry about something:

She’ll be right

‘She’ll’ is a verb contraction of the pronoun ‘she’ and the verb ‘will’.

When you’re combining a pronoun with the verb ‘have’.

They have many ways of fixing your car.

By combining the pronoun ‘they’ and the verb ‘have’ you can create a verb contraction:

They’ve many ways of fixing your car.

When you’re combining a pronoun with the verb ‘had’ or ‘would’:

Johnny would have done his homework if his dog had not eaten it.

becomes

Johnny would’ve done his homework if his dog hadn’t eaten it.

Click here to move on to the next topic: Forming the not form of a verb