Hi all!
I need a bit of help here. A friend of mine and I are having a bit of a disagreement. Basicly, she doesn't believe that it is correct to use the contraction"who're" as a substitute for"who are".

My friend challenged me to go online and prove her wrong. So.... I did just that, and submitted her a gazillion different webpages with"who're" in usage. Then, she claimed that all of those folks were wrong too. I then searched a few grammar tutorial sites, to see if I could find out if"who're" is kosher. No dice!

Can anyone out there help me out?
angelisa

Mmmmm, this is a difficult one. Firstly, I would like to establish a few "rules" about contractions.

WRITE THEM OUT IN FULL In business writing, you should not use apostrophes to replace letters. You should write all words in their full forms. - Therefore, the delivery date can't be met. (use "cannot" ) - It's available for collection on Tuesday. ( use "It is" )

CONTRACTIONS Words with apostrophes which replace letters are known as "contractions". It is unusual to create new contractions, and you should only use recognised ones: - g'tar (replacing the "ui" in guitar) - potato's (replacing the "e" in potatoes)

Now, this doesn't answer you who're question. However, if you've written it in officail document, then in my book it's yuk.

Is it wrong though? It is listed in Collins, along with "who'd" and "who'll". It is listed as the spoken form of "who are". So, it's the spoken form, but it's in the dictionary. Therefore, I am not sure who's the winner in your debate. English is like that sometimes!