: Using elision in poetry I am seriously wondering what the limits are concerning the use of elision. It seems from the definition that elision is the omission of one vowel, consonant or syllable:

Vote Up Vote Down

There are lots of elisions which are possible in speech, and which you could easily indicate by an apostrophe so as to specify the exact pronunciation in poetry:

mis'ry, comf'table, murd'rous extr'ordin'ry, and maybe us'ly.

Alternatively, you could indicate these pronunciations with spelling:

misry, comfterble, murdrous, extrordinry, uzhly.

Or, if your poetry has a strong meter, you could just trust your readers to realize that they need to drop some syllables to make it scan.

Personally, I think the apostrophes look better than misspelling the words.

But one comment: Do people actually say apostr'phe? I wouldn't know how to pronounce the sequence of consonants /strf/ in the middle of the word. I can pronounce aposterphe, but that has the same number of syllables as apostrophe, so unless you were trying to make it rhyme with Gloucester fee I don't see why you would want to specify that (not uncommon) mispronunciation.

If you want people to actually read your poetry out loud, I would recommend only using elisions where the resulting word is pronounceable.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

It was once common to use multiple elisions withing a single word, writing "cannot" as "c'n't" instead of the now standard "can't". This is now quite rare, but still valid, and may be used in psoetry to achieve a matrical effect. However, it may look contrived, and puzzle the reader, thus disrupting the flow of the verse, which is probably not what is wanted. Anyhtign too non-standard has this risk.

As to omitting the apostrophe as well, there are a few cases in which it is common or traditional to do so. "Til then" as an elision of "Until then" is not uncommon without an apostrophe, and "cant" without its apostrophe seems to be becoming more common. Come to think of it, "its" as the possessive of "it" never takes an apostrophe, as opposed to the contraction of "it is". But if there is any doubt, I would err on the side of leaving the apostrophe in. It makes what you are doing clearer, and reduces possible reader confusion. What is the benefit of leaving it out, after all? You aren't being charged by the character.

As to use in the middle of a word, note that the most commonly used elisions in modern English are the standard contractions "can't", "won't", "wouldn't", "shan't", and the like, all of which elide the "o" of "not" in a compound.

As Jason Bassford notes in a comment, elision can also refer to the omission of an entire word, phrase or sentence. This will not be indicated by an apostrophe, but, if at all, by an ellipsis (...) or possibly a dash. Such omissions are far from unheard of in poetry. Again, the problem is to make what remains clear enough to work for the reader.

(0)