From: dblack@... Date: 2006-04-22T02:33:58+09:00 Subject: Re: [QUIZ] Text Munger (#76) Hi -- On Fri, 21 Apr 2006, Matthew Moss wrote: >> Given a word like "there's" or "that's", does the letter before the >> apostrophe count as a "last" letter? In other words, could "that's" >> become "ttha's"? >> >> In the example above, there's no case where that letter gets >> scrambled. It's possible that that's coincidence, but it doesn't look >> like it. > > Do it whichever way you like it... > > I don't know what the study said about contractions, if anything. > Personally, I think I would consider the parts before and after as > separate words, which would be slightly less scrambled, but my > intuition (which could be wrong) says that counting it as one whole > word might throw off legibility more than expected. I guess if the part after the ' isn't going to be mixed in with the part before (which I definitely don't think it should be), then the part before does really count as a word, so its first and last letters would be preserved. there's => terhe's but not theer's David -- David A. Black (dblack@wobblini.net) Ruby Power and Light, LLC (http://www.rubypowerandlight.com) "Ruby for Rails" PDF now on sale! http://www.manning.com/black Paper version coming in early May!