contractions (was "creek don't rise")

[Seán Fitzpatrick]

When I was a lad, my uncle gave me some school-boy novels by Fr. Francis
Finn, SJ (http://tinyurl.com/3yfmbk) (they had perhaps belonged to my
grandfather).  They were written in the 1880s and '90s and spelled
contractions without the apostrophe.  _Mr._ Finn, SJ, as he was at the time
of composition, was an English teacher, so I don't think this was ignorance,
and it didn't seem to be an attempt to indicate  dialect/class/education.  I
remember boggling at "wont" and "cant", because they are words in their own
right.  I don't remember whether Finn used "dont", but I'm sure I would
recall "couldnt" and "doesnt" if he had used them.

Was there a fad at the time for writing contractions without the apostrophe?
I don't recall Twain using that style.

Seán Fitzpatrick
  Time flies like an arrow.
    Fruit flies like a banana.
      Chuck Yeager flies-like-airplanes.
http://www.logomachon.blogspot.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Doyle [mailto:cdoyle at UGA.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, 21 February, 2007 08:13
Subject: Re: "creek don't rise"

Nice "find," Stephen!

That way of writing the contraction, "do n't," was prevalent in 19th-century
and early-20th-century journalism, but I don't know the history of
contraction-spelling, or whether the "spaced" spelling is supposed to
represent a certain pronunciation, like "do" + [@nt].

--Charlie

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