title: nltk tokenization and contractions
body: <p>I'm tokenizing text with nltk, just sentences fed to wordpunct_tokenizer. This splits contractions (e.g. 'don't' to 'don' +" ' "+'t') but I want to keep them as one word. I'm refining my methods for a more measured  and precise tokenization of text, so I need to delve deeper into the nltk tokenization module beyond simple tokenization. </p>
  
  <p>I'm guessing this is common and I'd like feedback from others who've maybe had to deal with the particular issue before.</p>
  
  <p>edit: </p>
  
  <p>Yeah this a general, splattershot question I know</p>
  
  <p>Also, as a novice to nlp, do I need to worry about contractions at all?</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: </p>
  
  <p>The SExprTokenizer or TreeBankWordTokenizer seems to do what I'm looking for for now.</p>