Standardisation of contractions

Hi all,

In an attempt to gain some culture, I have been reading Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carol.

One thing that struck me as interesting (rather than just generally bizarre) is his use of the contration ca’n’t in place of cannot / can not. I have a vague recollection from school of apostrophies being used to indicate places in contractions where letters have been removed, so the ca’n’t contraction seems to make complete sense.

There are a few things that I would like to know about this: Was this a commonly used contraction? (I don’t read a lot of books from the 1800’s). When did it change from ca’n’t to can’t? And finally, what is a good reference for learning more about punctuation and grammar in general? I have to do quite a bit of writing in the course of my job, and I would like to know that I am punctuating properly.

Thanks all.
Dave T

Not if you consider the “n” to come from “can” rather than “not”…

A google search came up with:

From here, and I don’t know who Mr Daniels is…
Similarly:

It certainly would be considered incorrect, or at the very best charmingly archaic, these days.

Try http://www.stpt.usf.edu/pms/intro.html for some punctuation guidance, although I disagree with this part:

There is no need for those ugly apostrophes. Cs, Ds, As, 5s and 4s are all perfectly clear from context. Occasionally, if there is scope for confusion, you might want to use one, e.g. “A’s are not easy to attain on this course,” but in this instance I would rephrase by using “A-grades” instead.