’tis. ‘tis

The grammar geeks at the Wall Street Journal clarify an issue I’ve long wondered about:

The word ’tis takes an apostrophe, not an open single-quote, because the apostrophe replaces a “missing” letter. In other words, ’tis is a shortened form of “it is.”

This is why rock ’n’ roll is properly spelled with two apostrophes, though writers often stumble and use an open-quote mark before the “n.” The two apostrophes replace the missing letters in “and.”

Problem is, unlike in the typewriter era, today’s writers are at the mercy of their editing software with such keyboard characters. We can think we’re typing in an apostrophe, but chances are that an open quote will appear instead if it’s before a letter. The writer has to go back and hit the key again to get the proper character to appear.

And note the spelling ’N Sync for the band (the apostrophe replaces the “I” in what could be read as In Sync), as well as the ’Ndrangheta, Italy’s most powerful and richest crime syndicate. Both names properly start with an apostrophe.