A list of contractions from divinewrite and a regex to find and eradicate the more unseemly from your documents (remember to use a case-insensitive search).
Regex to catch both the “least formal” and “less formal” contractions:
\b((could|how|might|must|should|that|what|when|where|why|would|it)n?['‘’](d|ll|re|ve)|why['‘’]s|we['‘’](d|re|ve|ll)|s?he['‘’](s|d|ll)|(where|how|when|who)['‘’](s)|(who|you|it)['‘’](d)|(they|who)['‘’](ll|ve)|(might|must)n['‘’]t|i'd)\b
Regex to catch these:
\b((could|how|might|must|should|that|what|when|where|why|would|it)n?['‘’](d|ll|re|ve)|why['‘’]s)\b
- how’ll
- what’re
- why’ll
- should’ve
- would’ve
- must’ve
- could’ve
- when’ll
- might’ve
- where’ll
- why’d
- where’d
- why’s
- it’ll
- what’ll
- that’d
- that’ll
- what’d
Regex to catch these:
\b(we['‘’](d|re|ve|ll)|s?he['‘’](s|d|ll)|(where|how|when|who)['‘’](s)|(who|you|it)['‘’](d)|(they|who)['‘’](ll|ve)|(might|must)n['‘’]t|i'd)\b
- I’d
- we’re
- we’d
- she’ll
- we’ve
- he’ll
- we’ll
- she’s
- he’s
- mightn’t
- where’s
- how’s
- she’d
- when’s
- he’d
- who’s
- it’d
- who’d
- you’d
- mustn’t
- they’ll
- who’ll
- they’ve
These are acceptable in even the more formal business documents (no need for a regex here).
- I’ll
- I’ve
- I’m
- you’ll
- you’re
- you’ve
- what’s
- weren’t
- they’re
- won’t
- don’t
- doesn’t
- isn’t
- aren’t
- wasn’t
- hasn’t
- haven’t
- hadn’t
- didn’t
- shouldn’t
- couldn’t
- can’t
- it’s