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Is there some rule against ending a sentence with the contraction “it's”?

I was having an SMS conversation with a friend and somehow "Yes you're" came into play in retaliation to a comment.

Example:

Person 1: "You are bad at English".

Person 2: "No I are not.".

Person 1: "Yes you're".

Is that acceptable?

I would assume that it is.

Think of "don't".

You can say:

"No, don't."

or

"I don't."

and it is a contraction like "you're".

So, is it okay?

Community
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MrZander
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3 Answers3

17

No, this is unidiomatic. "You're" always requires a subjective completion. (And to my ears, it sounds completely wrong.)

James McLeod
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It depends what you mean by okay and proper. I have never come across it personally, but there's been at least one other question about it here. If native speakers are using it, then it clearly exists. There is no reason in principle why it should not become widely established, but that is far from being the case at the moment.

Barrie England
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    I think OP's example is never okay, but it's interesting that we can use contractions more in negating utterances. With "Are you happy?", you can reply "No, I'm not" - but you certainly can't just say "Yes, I'm". – FumbleFingers Dec 13 '11 at 16:01
  • @FumbleFingers: What I don't know, because I've never heard anyone say it, is whether it's just an idiosyncracy of the speech of one or two people, perhaps used jokingly, or whether it's more widespread. – Barrie England Dec 13 '11 at 16:05
  • Well, OP's Person 2 starts off by replying, "No I are not". Which construction I'm sure will have been used consciously and facetiously by almost every native speaker at some point in a lifetime. But we shouldn't read anything into simple inadvertant mistakes made by non-native speakers. Especially not in the context of SMS text. – FumbleFingers Dec 13 '11 at 16:19
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You're fine if you use this form - it doesn't sound wrong at all.

"Your" is second person possessive. "You're" is a contraction for "You are". Same as "they're" and "their" - and there is a subtle difference in pronunciation, in both cases.

Vector
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