In formal writing, such as business letters, academic papers and such, we probably won't use many non-standard words. But for casual writing, and especially fiction, we can choose from a wealth of unconventional terms to add colour and richness to our expressions.
This is especially the case when we try to write language as it's spoken, such as in dialogue. Here we strive to capture the way speech sounds, rather than articulate the speaker's words correctly. And regional dialects and foreign accents might require the apostrophe to help us more accurately express a speaker's voice.
One classic example is in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, where Joseph's speech is still to this day almost unintelligible to me.
When asked where Heathcliff is, he answers, "T' maister's down i' 't fowld." (The master is down in the [sheep]fold).
Here, in trying to capture the character's broad Yorkshire accent, Bronte's has omitted the "he" of "the," (twice) and the "n" of "in." Simple enough, but it still makes for difficult reading.
Often a word is written as we might pronounce it, like wishin', and hopin', and singin' for example.
In each case here the apostrophe indicates that "g," the last letter of the word, is omitted.
Sometimes it's the first letter that's omitted, such as 'ello, or one of the other letters in a word, such as s'pose (suppose).
So you can see that the apostrophe can as versatile as we need it to be when we want to be creative with the English language.
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