(timber), the standard literary apostrophe-less spellings being nummer, chaumer and timmer. The cluster is reduced to in some Scots dialects hence spellings such as caun'le (candle), haun (hand) and staun (stand) though the is generally written in the literary standard, thus caundle, haund and staund. The cluster is also reduced to in some Scots dialects, hence spellings such as aul (old), caul (cold) and faul (fold) though the is generally written in the literary standard, thus auld, cauld and fauld. Loss of consonants By the Middle Scots period, and deletion had occurred intervocalically and between a nasal/liquid consonant and a vowel. Hence spellings such as de'il (devil), gi'e (give), ha'e (have), lo'e (love), o (of), o'er (over) and sil'er (silver), the standard literary apostrophe-less spellings being deil, gie, hae, lue, o, ower and siller. Also by that period, word-final had been lost in a number of words. Hence spellings such as fro' (froth), quo' (quoth), wi' (with) and mou''' (mouth), the standard literary apostrophe-less spellings being fro, quo, wi and mou, the latter having the doublet mooth. Change of vowel In some Scots words the realisation differs from that of the Standard English cognate; hence spellings such as bak (bake), mak (make) and tak (take), the standard literary apostrophe-less spellings being bak, mak and tak. Legitimate use of the apostrophe in Scots Many words in Scots have both a full form and a contracted form. In contracted forms, an apostrophe is generally used in place of the elided graphemes, for example, e'en and even, e'er and iver (ever), eneu and eneuch (enough), lea and leave, ne'er and niver (never), ne'er's day and new year's day, nor'land and northland. In the construction of the past tense or past participle, Scots often appends the apostrophe to verbs ending with ee to prevent three es from occurring in a single word:dee (die) > dee'dgree (agree) > gree'dScots also uses, as does English, the apostrophe to indicate contractions of multiple words: A'm (I'm), wi't (with it), ye're (you're), o't (of it). Notes References William Grant and David D. Murison (eds) The Scottish National Dictionary (SND) (1929–1976), The Scottish national Dictionary Association, vol. I Edinburgh. A History of Scots to 1700'' in A Dictionary of Older Scots Vol. 12. Oxford University Press 2002. External links Phonetic Description of Scottish Language and Dialects Orthography Scots language Nonstandard spelling