Jul 02, 2009 10:16
A fairly innocuous email tickled my brain.
"Do we not have insurance?"
I would usually phrase that as "Don't we have insurance?", which, with either more or fewer contractions, is: "Don't we've insurance?" and "Do not we have insurance?", both of which sound really clunky.
The clunkiest by far is "Don't we've". Is there actually a rule that says you can only use "we've" to summarise the have that means "in the past", as opposed to "own"?