What is the proper apostrophe placement for using the letter N in place of the word “and”?
Alek RichterEnlightened
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What is the proper apostrophe placement for using the letter N in place of the word “and”?
In reality, you may mostly find the shortened form of and written as ‘n, — one apostrophe before n.
The rationale can be found in its evolution. In informal use, words ending in ing started appearing with the final g dropped: goin’. This has extended to many words with a penultimate n, so and became an’.
Next shortening, confined almost exclusively to the word and, dropped the a — when it was written variously as ‘n’ / ‘n.
Even now both the forms can be seen.