• But how to punctuate it? •
[3 MIN READ]
There’s a phrase that I like to use in speaking that hearkens to levity and relaxed speaking. But it poses a problem in writing because of the question of how to punctuate it. For this academic librarian, that—in turn—raises the question of acceptable information sources. The phrase is an incredulous response to a rhetorical question or comment: “Gee the forecast said the rain would stop. Now it’s literally raining on my outdoor plans.” “Who’da thunk it?”
The grammatically proper rendition of “Who’da thunk it?” is “Who would have thought it?” But sometimes the most casual version is the most effective, especially when it’s least expected, such as in a formal conversation among educated speakers. When written, the proper punctuation would test even the most educated, though; particularly when the free web is the most accessible way to determine how.
If popular usage is any indication, the proper punctuation is as already written, the way I’ve chosen to render it here. However, the phrase is a contraction of words: It leaves letters out. Given that, the rule is to substitute an apostrophe for the missing letters: don’t (for “do not”), o’clock (for “of the clock”), and ‘tis (for “it is”). Hence, “who’da” should correctly be rendered “who’d’a’.” Note the final apostrophe, which is the replacement for the letters “ve” at the end of “have.”
A search on the phrase ‘punctuating “who’da'” thunk it’ is effectively worthless. As of this writing, the primary search result relates to the grammatical correctness of the phrase and the accuracy of the word “thunk” as the past tense of “think.”
A search on the phrase ‘punctuating contractions’ is useful, generating results from multiple credible sources, at least based on them appearing on the first page of search results. And face it, how many people actually go past that with the average search? Google’s AI is the first result, but that’s not yet a reliable source. The first nine website sources are University of Sussex, GCFGlobal, University of Nevado Reno, Grammarly, The Punctuation Guide, Grammar Monster, Excelsior OWL, Scribbr, and Grammar Goddess. The top three YouTube video sources are Khan Academy, Scratch Garden, and Mind Blooming.
Among those sources, which would you tell people you used? The university sources seem compelling, but you don’t need an academic source for people to believe you. Most of the other sources are ones of which I’ve never (yet) heard. Among the ones I have heard, Grammarly is the most familiar, even if that’s mostly because of an aggressive recent marketing campaign.
Upon reading, the author Matt Ellis does quite a thorough job of explaining the rules and offering multiple examples. I would have liked his blogpost more if Grammarly had provided links to his credentials and if he’d offered some of his sources. But for my purposes, and given that I’m mostly only going to prove my point in conversations among friends, Grammarly is the source.
Ultimately, the issues to consider are how authoritative a source you need for your purposes. Outside of academic writing, where you wouldn’t tend to be discussing punctuation rules anyway, a familiar popular source is just fine, particularly one that people in your conversation circles are likely to know. People with whom I converse are exposed to Grammarly as much as I.
It brings to mind the instance of a relatively new university librarian rushing to me to point out the use of Wikipedia by the author of an academic library article she was reading. She was aghast. For my part, I checked the use of the citation in the article text to learn they were defining a term of interest. No problem, as far as I was concerned. “Oh, well. I guess if you think it’s okay…” she walked away saying.
Now about the word “thunk”; that’s another problem, n’ah’mean?
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