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I read this in a product review, and it has been bugging me all day.

Three words: it's really cheap.

"It's" is obviously a contraction of two words, but does it count as one or two words?

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Pick a definition of word (or look up "it's" in a dictionary). If it's a word then 1, if not then 2. – Mitch Sep 4 '12 at 17:56
I'd count "it's" as one word. It may be a contraction of two, but that contraction still forms a single word. According to NOAD's definition of a word, "it's" would pass the single-word test. – J.R. Sep 4 '12 at 18:11
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If you're counting words in something you've written and you get paid by the word, it's two. Otherwise, it's one. – Jay Sep 4 '12 at 19:03
+1 that would bug me all day too. It IS going to bug me all day. – JAM Sep 4 '12 at 19:08
@Jay Although your comment is amusing, I feel compelled to point out that it is not actually correct. – tchrist Sep 5 '12 at 16:05
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3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

MS Word and the concordoncer I’m using count them as one. Some dictionaries may count them as two. It all depends on what your purpose is in counting.

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Barrie, what is a "concordoncer"? I looked it up in two online dictionaries and on Google and could not find an obvious definition. – JAM Sep 5 '12 at 16:07
@JAM lextutor.ca/concordancers What else is Google for, ha! – Kris Sep 7 '12 at 6:39
@JAM: It's software that allows an electronically stored corpus to be interrogated for lexical and grammatical features. – Barrie England Sep 7 '12 at 6:45
up vote 2 down vote

According to your question, "It's" is obviously a contraction of two words

... into one, right?

Where's the doubt, then?

In the given context, it is beyond question that "It's" is one word.

In a different context where you may be concerned with serious lexical parsing, you may need to treat it as two words, though.

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I have indeed seen lexical analysers that have an apostrophe-s token. – tchrist Sep 5 '12 at 17:44
up vote 1 down vote

If it has spaces or other punctuation around it, it is one word, just as hyphenated words and compound words are. Each of these list items is a single word:

  • won’t, he’ll, oughtn’t, ’tisn’t, I’d’ve, couldn’t’ve, o’rreaching, mine’ll, ain’t, durstn’t
  • big-hearted, teeter-totter, to-morrow, now-a-days, snarf-n-barf, wine-colored, re-elect, vis-à-vis, tête-à-tête, air-cushioned, arch-enemy, salpingo-oöphorectomy
  • cannot, tomorrow, yesterday, nowadays, windshield, Christmas, Halloween, Michaelmas, elsewhither, grandmother, crosswalk, corkscrew, overdiversified, overreaching, breastfeed
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