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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?

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    In SMS speak "Yes you are" can be abbreviated to "Y U R" or something similar.
    – Henry
    Dec 13, 2011 at 8:15
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    As a side note, it would be Person 2: "No, I am not." or more likely "No I'm not." when spoken.
    – jprete
    Dec 13, 2011 at 17:21
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    @jprete It was supposed to sound like he was bad at English :P
    – MrZander
    Dec 13, 2011 at 18:53

3 Answers 3

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

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  • It sounds bad to me too, I was just curious if it was proper. Thanks :)
    – MrZander
    Dec 13, 2011 at 7:55
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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.

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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, 2011 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, 2011 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, 2011 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.

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